Dogwhelk's Saltmarsh Flora of Britain

Dominated by about 20 halophytes (lit. salt-plants) and those plants able to tolerate immersion for long periods of time, saltmarshes are highly productive and contain some unusual plants. With the exception of seagrasses and mangroves, saltmarsh plants are the only vascular 'higher' plants to encroach upon the sea. They possess cell-sap with very high levels of salt, enabling osmosis to occur and the plants to take up water from their saline surroundings.

Saltmarshes form on raised mudflats, which have become a little firmer and are immersed for shorter periods of times. There is a succession of species, each causing the marsh to become a little higher and drier, until true terrestrial plants start to colonise the habitat.

List of saltmarsh plants (Only drawings at the moment, but to be replaced with photographs as and when....)

Pictures and key adapted from The Wild Flower Key, British Isles-N.W. Europe, F. Rose, Penguin Group, 1991

Key to British Saltmarsh Flora
Note - relies on morphology other than flowers, so useful for spring/early summer
1.Low bushy evergreen shrubs to ~1m...2
Herbs............................3
2.Erect shrub; many branches; blunt, fleshy, hairless green leaves (10x2mm) Suaeda spp. (Sea-blights)
More spreading shrub; oval, mealy-grey,flat leaves (40x15mm) Halimione portulacoides (Sea-purslane)
3.No obvious leaves, just fleshy or swollen stems Salicornia spp. (Glassworts)
Plants with obvious leaves 4
4.Grass-like, with non-fleshy leaves 5
Narrow but fleshy leaves >10cm, arranged in basal rosette 8
Strap-shaped or cylindrical fleshy leaves 1-5cm, arranged along the stems10
Definate blade and stalk to leaves, blades flat11
Cylindrical leaves/stem are tough, rigid and sharply pointed, form tufts.............Juncus maritimus (Sea rush)
Leaves twice-pinnately divided into 1mm-wide white, woolly segments.....Artemisia maritima (Sea wormwood)
5.Grass with leafy runners forming dense turf, grey-green hairless leaves...Puccinellia maritima (Saltmarsh grass)
Plant erect with underground rhizomes.............6
6.
7
7.
8.
9
9.
10.
11.
12
13
12.
13.

Salicornia spp. (Glassworts)
Inula crithmoides (Golden samphire)
Cochlearia anglica (English scurvygrass) and C. officinalis (Common scurvygrass)
Agropyron pungens (Sea couch grass)
Limonium spp. (Sea lavenders)
Plantago martitima (Sea plantain)
Artemisia maritima (Sea wormwood)
Spergularia spp. (Sea-spurreys)
Suaeda spp. (Sea-blights)
Triglochin maritima (Sea arrowgrass)
Glaux maritima (Sea-milkwort)
Aster tripolium (Sea aster)
Chenopodiaceae (Goosefoot Family, inc. oraches, sea beet and sea-purslane)

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