8A^T> DUNES AND SALT MARSHES 



saucer, prostrate on the sand. By a central 

 tap-root it draws its nourislunent from the 

 damp sand below. The purple gerardia, 

 closely akin to the seaside gerardia of the salt 

 marsh, and the joint-weed, Avith its delicate 

 rose-colored or white blossoms that appear 

 throughout the fall, are also common. 



The beach wormwood is another plant of 

 these sandy regions, a plant brought from 

 northwestern Asia, but one that has rapidly 

 increased in numbers on the Atlantic shores 

 in the last thirty years. It is the " dusty 

 miller " of old-fashioned gardens, and I am 

 inclined to think that at Ipswich it escaped 

 into the dunes from the old lighthouse-keep- 

 er's garden. There is also one patch of bear- 

 berry in the Ipswich dunes. 



Each species of goldenrod— and there are 

 over fifty in eastern North America— has an 

 interest and beauty of its own, but the salt- 

 loving species, the seaside goldenrod, which 

 is equally at home on the edges of the dunes 

 and on the border of the salt marshes, is cer- 

 tainly one of the finest, with its dark green 

 vigorous leaves and its robust flowering stalk 

 of large golden flowers. Long after the flow- 

 ers have succumbed to the frosts the stalks 



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