Flowers, as you know, love moist soil,
and not dry sand; and, like us, they prefer one food to another. Sand
they do not like, and salt is a poison to them. Both of these are
enemies to plant life.
Also, flowers choose sheltered spots. They do not like rough winds, and
the glare of the sun shrivels them up. Yet there are plants with pretty
flowers to be found by the sea, and many others with small, dull
flowers. These seaside plants have to fight for their lives. The dry,
shifting sand, and the salt spray, are enough to kill them, you would
think. They have no shelter from the strong sea wind, nor from the
fierce glare of the summer sun. The puzzle is, how do they live among so
many enemies? For you know that the flowers of the field would at once
die if you planted them in salt and sand. They would starve to death.
Even the strongest seaside plants shun that part of the beach washed by
the waves. They leave that to the seaweeds.
Let us look first at some plants which have their home on the
sand-hills. Here is a fine one, like a thistle, with stiff prickly
leaves, and a stiff blue stem.
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