The Sand Strand Flora of Marine Coasts 



Bp Pehr Olsson-Seffer, Ph. D. 



1. REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE ON SAND 

 FLORAS. 



The earliest data about plants confined to sand formations, particu- 

 larly coastal dunes, we find in Smallegange's Chronijk van Zeeland, 

 1696, where it is mentioned (p. 313) that some dunes on the Forth Sea 

 coast had been planted with. Marram-grass or Helm (Ammophila 

 armaria) already in 1307. Maximilian of Austria issued in 1510 a 

 proclamation upon planting the Helm, and in 1567 the government of 

 Holland also prescribed, in an official edict, the planting of this species 

 on the coastal dunes. 



The problem of arresting the drifting of sand and of utilizing the 

 dunes has since that time been considered to be of primary importance 

 for Holland, and we find that the Dutch had made great progress by 

 the middle of 1700, when the question was brought into prominence in 

 Denmark and on the coast of Northern Germany. 



At Tidsvilde in Sjaelland in Denmark there is still an old monument 

 bearing an inscription in Latin to the effect that the drifting sand at 

 that place had been fixed in 1738 by Eoehl, a German by birth, who 

 planted the dunes with Marram-grass. The Danish king resolved in 

 1779 that every citizen should plant a certain area with this grass, and 

 the document, which is still preserved in the public archives in Copen- 

 hagen, gave detailed instructions regarding the mode of planting. 



On Wangeroog, one of the North Friesian islands, similar planta- 

 tions were made at least as early as 1754, from which year there is on 

 record a map by J. D. Tanner. 



In 1768 Professor J. D. Titius of Wittenberg wrote a prize essay on 

 fixation of drifting sand on the Baltic coast (Gerhard, p. 286), and 

 his proposals were put into practical tests at Danzig under the direction 

 of a Swede, Abraham Lindstrom, during 1771. The experiment proved, 



