CHENOPODIACEA. il 
The extremes of varieties « and @ are very unlike in habit, but it is 
impossible to draw any distinct line between them. 
Common Marsh Samphire. 
Freuch, Salicorne herbacée. German, Krautartiges Glasschmalz. 
This plant was formerly collected in large quantities from the muddy flats near the 
coast, where it generally grows, and burnt for barilla; being first dried in the sun, 
and then made up into small heaps over holes, which received the soda ash, in a 
melted state, as it ran from the burning masses. With many other plants of the order 
it is still used for this purpose in the countries around the Mediterranean ; but since 
the introduction of Le Blane’s process for obtaining soda from common salt, the 
importance of barilla as an article of commerce has much diminished. It is also used 
as a pickle, and has somewhat the flavour of the Rock-samphire. 
SPECIES L—SALICORNIA RADICANS. Sm 
Prats MCLXXXIII. 
S. herbacea, var. Benth. Handbk. Brit. Fl. ed. ii. p. 386. 
S. fruticosa, Sm. Engl. Bot. ed. i. No. 2467 (non Linn). 
Root perennial. Stem woody, procumbent, sending up erect her- 
baceous branches, which are usually simple, or with short secondary 
branches; internodes of the branches subcylindrical, scarcely thickened 
upwards, slightly compressed. Spikes cylindrical in flower, fusiform- 
or clayate-cylindrical in fruit. Flowers in threes, immersed in the 
fleshy spike towards the base on each side of each internode, the 3 
flowers arranged in an obtuse-angled triangle. Seed with an herba- 
ceous hairy testa. Perianth slightly winged along the cleft in fruit. 
Plant olive green, usually tinged with fawn colour. 
In muddy and shingly salt marshes by tidal rivers. Local, and 
confined to the south-east of England. In Dorset, Hants, Sussex, 
Kent, Essex, and Norfolk. 
England. Shrub. Autumn. 
Stem woody, procumbent, from the thickness of a crow-quill to that 
of a man’s little finger, and 6 inches to 2 feet long, sending up very 
numerous rather slender branches furnished with short lateral branch- 
lets, or nearly entire. In other respects this plant comes very near 
S. herbacea, but the two grow together, so the difference cannot be 
the effect of situation; and it is certainly not from luxuriance, as 
suggested by Mr. Bentham, as the first year’s plants of 5. radicans 
are considerably smaller, or at least with the branches much more 
slender, than in S. herbacea of the same age. S. radicans, however, 
never flowers the first season, and in the second it does not commence 
flowering till nearly a month after S. herbacea. The spikes are gene- 
rally shorter and considerably thicker towards the apex, and the plant 
