VEGETATION IN THE DUNES 



stand up like gray plumes waving in the wind. 

 While the cultivated sweet pea does not blos- 

 som unless it has an abundance of moisture, 

 its wild relative, the beach pea, with its purple 

 flowers and rich green leaves, thrives amid 

 the dry sand and bears plentifully its flowers 

 and small round peas. 



One would hardly expeet to find mushrooms 

 growing in the dry sand, but there are a nmn- 

 ber such, both on the bare wastes and among 

 the groves of trees and bushes. The most 

 noticeable one is the sand-star puffball, which 

 in wet weather stretches its leathery-looking 

 star flat on the sand, and holds on its upper 

 surface a puffball not much larger than a 

 hazel-nut. In dry weather the leathery arms 

 of the star curl up dry and brittle aroimd the 

 puffball, as if to protect it from the sun. Com- 

 mon in the dimes is a brown mushroom whose 

 stem, swollen and bulbous, extends down some 

 distance into the sand, as if to retain as much 

 moisture as possible. 



The depressions between the dunes, which 

 vary in size from small circular basins but a 

 few feet across, to valleys a third of a mile 

 broad between the amphitheatre waves, are 

 to a large extent carpeted with cranberry 



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