CLXXI.— THE TAMARISK. 
Tamar ix ang/ica Webb. 
T WO small Families of the Parietales are not represented here. These are the 
Elatinacece, the Water-Pepper or Pipewort Family, including two rare British 
submerged aquatic plants, and the Frankeniacea, the Sea Heaths, one of which, a 
halophyte with inrolled hairy, heath-like leaves, is British. Closely related to this 
latter is the Family Tamaricaccce. 
With our moist climate and generally fertile soil, it is only the sandy sea-shore, 
more or less permeated by saline water, which shows us any parallel in its vegetation 
to the desert areas of other regions. There Sea Holly, Sea Kale, the Yellow Horned 
Poppy, and other fleshy plants covered with a blue-grey bloom of wax, may flourish 
even among the shingle : the short turf sloping to the sea will be diversified with 
Thrift, stunted Gorse, and other low-growing plants ; while Tamarisk bushes may 
wave their feathery branches along the margin of the beach. 
The Tamaricacece is a small Family, but one of wide geographical range. They 
are shrubs or small trees with whip-like branches, minute, scale-like leaves, and 
spikes of small blossoms, and are found from Japan and China to Madeira and the 
Canary Islands and from Siberia to Senegambia. They inhabit deserts, steppes, and 
sandy shores in sub-tropical or Temperate climates, and are among the few plants 
which seem to flourish best in the salt air and water near the sea. Of the ninety 
species, in five genera, belonging to the Family, more than two-thirds belong to the 
genus Tamarix, the distribution of which is almost as wide as that of the Family as 
a whole. The minute, scattered leaves have no stipules : the parts of the little 
polysymmetric and perfect blossoms are in fours or fives, except that the stamens 
may be twice as many, or even indefinite, in number, and that the one-chambered 
ovary may be made up of two, three, four, or five carpels. The ascending, parietal 
ovules are anatropous, and become, in the seed stage, plumed with hairs like those 
of the Willows. 
Tamarix anglica Webb is, in spite of its name, very doubtfully wild on our 
coasts. It seldom approaches the dimensions of a tree ; but its tolerance of the 
boisterous sea-breezes, the bright green of its almost perennial foliage, contrasting 
with its red-hued branches and its delicate little spikes of pink blossom, make it a 
valuable acquisition to our shores. Its slender ascending branches would suggest a 
Willow, did not the minute, closely-overlapping leaves immediately recall the 
Cypresses and Heaths. The shrub is still occasionally known as Cypress in Cornwall 
and as Chipre in Guernsey, and seems to have been confused with Heath or Ling in 
early times. Common on the shores of the Mediterranean, the Tamarisk must have 
been known to the early Greek botanists. Pliny says that it was the Mvolkt), Murike, 
of Dioscorides ; but the origin of the name Tamarisk is uncertain. It has been 
derived from the Hebrew tamarik, cleansing, from its use either for purifying the 
