354 TlMEHRI. 



Three or four kinds of the fleshv-leaved, succulent 

 plants characteristic of the sea-shore will be met with 

 here ; the one with pink flowers — the colour being really 

 given by the calyx, for it has no petals — is the seaside 

 purslane (Sesuvium portulacastrum) . A weak, diffuse 

 plant with small round whitish flower-heads, is a species 

 of seaside everlasting plant or rupture-wort (Alternan- 

 thera ficoidea) : a larger plant, straggling among the 

 bushes or rooting by runners, with almost cylindrical 

 leaves like little pea-pods, and minute greenish-white 

 flowers in short heads in the axils of the upper leaves, is 

 the barilla or Jamaica samphire (Batis maritima) ; and a 

 rather similar plant, common on the Kelly dam and fur- 

 ther up the road, with white flowers in scorpioid spikes, 

 grey-green glaucous leaves, and tiny nutlets for its fruit, 

 is the sea-side heliotrope (Heliotropium curassavi'cu/nj, 

 also called wild lavender. 



Among the higher flowering bushes here the com- 

 monest is the well-known courida bush (Aviccnnia 

 nittda), with lanceolate leaves and small bunches of white 

 or cream-coloured flowers, dotted with the dark projecting 

 stamens, and generally mixed with already faded blossoms. 

 There is no better plant than this forbindingand preserving 

 an exposed sea-shore, its roots everywhere penetrating 

 the soil and sending up short upright processes, from which 

 engineers might well have taken the plan of driving in 

 stakes to break the waves upon a sea-front in shallow 

 water. Here too we shall find the wild mahoe (Pati- 

 tium tiliaccum). growing twelve or fifteen feet high, with 

 broad rounded leaves curiously snipped into a short 

 abrupt point at the end of the mid-rib, and large yellow 

 flowers like an hibiscus ; and the seaside mahoe or poplar 



