Saline Plants

Saline Plants. Those plants which grow on or near the seashore, in the water of the sea or of salt lakes, or on the beds of dried-up lakes, and which are therefore used to a supply of salt which is above the average in amount, and which therefore become to a certain extent modified in form and function, may if we choose be called saline plants, but the term is of no particular value. Few of them are strictly aquatic plants, except the marine Algae, or Seaweeds, which grow immersed in salt water, either always or in certain states of the tide, and derive their nourishment from it through their fronds, and not by roots from the rock to which they are attached. Grasswrack (q.v.), however, is an instance of a phanerogamous plant living entirely and always immersed in salt water. Other phanerogamous plants grow chiefly or only on the seashore and in salt marshes. Some of these, however, as the sea-kale, may be cultivated in gardens remote from the sea, but they succeed best when liberally supplied with salt. Asparagus is another well-known garden-plant which derives much benefit from similar treatment. Some of the Saltworts (q.v.) and other saline plants yield much soda when collected and burned, and the produce was at one time largely imported into Britain from Spain and other countries under the name of Barilla (q.v.). The dry steppes of Russia and Tartary, having in many places a strongly saline soil, are covered with a very peculiar vegetation. Among the ornaments of these steppes is Halimodendron argenteum, a shrub of the natural order Leguminosae, often cultivated in gardens for its beautiful rose-coloured flowers and silvery gray leaves. Saline plants have their whole tissues impregnated with salt.