Seasides and Strand Plants 
The cactus has next to no water and the saltwort 
poisonous water, so that in both cases they modify 
themselves and take in as little as possible. 
The author cannot say that the saltwort is able to 
grow vigorously enough to be of much importance in 
the way of collecting or straining out of the floods any 
floating rubbish. Professor Flahault has very carefully 
described the behaviour of an allied species (S. macro- 
stachys). This is of a more branching habit, and grows 
on the tide-swept beaches of the Camargue in the South 
of France. Sand gathers round itas well as leaf-mould 
and rubbish ; other mud plants manage to grow amongst 
its branches, and so the settlement of one Salicornia 
macrostachya may become a tuft 2 to 3 feet in diameter. 
By the gradual coalescing of such tufts the area of in- 
habited country gradually extends seawards,° 
The author has never been able to trace anything of 
this kind in Britain, but of course the level of such 
sandbanks is always rising by the continual deposit of 
silt and sand at high tide. 
The colonisation seems (in the Solway) to advance 
outwards from the Armeria mudflats, and it is a grass, 
Glyceria maritima, which seems the really important 
plant. Its long trailing branches grow outwards lying on 
the sand or mud, and root if they have the chance to do so, 
Thus it extends into and annexes the territory of the 
saltwort, which occurs between and amongst the Gly- 
ceria. At this stage the occupation is still very scanty 
but then goes more rapidly onwards, for any silt or 
floating material will be strained out of the water as 
the tide oozes out. 
Very soon Armeria itself as well as Triglochin and 
Plantago maritima, Aster Tripolium (in some places 
also Spergularia marina and Glaux) begin to form the 
typical Armeria flat. 
161 L 
