SEA-SAND GRASS AS A LANDWINNER.

Evening Star, Issue 6762, 29 November 1884, Page 2 (Supplement)

SEA-SAND GRASS AS A LANDWINNER.

We commend the following to the notice of the Ocean Beach Domain Board : Most persona who have resided on the coast in almost any part of England must have noticed hummocks of sand, often of considerable size and height, covered with a greyish-green rush-like grass. In not a few ? laces—as in the neighborhood of Ramsgate; r armouth, and Huntingdon—not only hundreds, but thousands of acres have been raised high and dry above the sea level solely by the agency of this little plant. It is a curious provision of Nature on those windy shores by which sand washed up by the tides and dried by the sun is blown back into the country, and forms a succession of hillocks, usually with channels of loose sand between them, the soil of which is not yet bound and compacted by the growth of the sea graßs. The plant is commonly known as marram (or marrem) grass; to botanists as Psamma arenaria. So tough are the leaves that a single one will lift a weight of three pounds and even more, and four of them twisted together require a strong hand to break them. Carefully examiced, the3e leaves are beautiful structures, smooth and glassy outside, but of a silvery or glaucous gray on the under or concave side, reminding one of the inner skin of a rush after pulling away the pith. In July plant Bends up erect spikes, with heads some six inches long, in shape closely resembling a fox's brush, and of a pale green or gray color. As the sand covers it, so the grass keeps growing above the surface, and thus the whole interior of the sandhill is found, when cut open, to be one great parcel of damp earth tied up with.strong whipr' cords, and not only tied up but laced through and through with the long underground .stems. . I nave often procured specimens of these strong, tough, rigid, and bamboo-like runners, three yards and more in length. Wherever the sea has "leftthe coast"—that is, thrown up enough sand to, form a foreshore above the reaoh of high tide—scant patches of the sea-marram begin to grow, and hummocks immediately; begin to be formed,. But the grass will only grow where the salt water cannot touch it. By watching on windy days the cloiids of dry sand blown along the shore,. and. across the marrampatches, I found that it was always immediately arrested by these,. It was the dampness of the surface that stopped the loose; drifting sand. But why was it always damp when the sea never touched it, and damp, too, and firm to the tread, even at the top of a hummock, at all events an inch or two below the surface ? The hillocks, so to say, perspire or transmit moisture enough, drawn up fi?om below by the roots of the grass, to fix the drifting sand,.when the momentum of its career by the, wind-currents has first been broken and arrested by the blades. It seems quite conceivable that the concave and spoon-like side has the especial property of catching the sand-grains and letting them run down, as along a pipe, to the crown of the root. In this way millions of tons of sand have been piled up, which without the grass would be entirely blown away. As the sea gets further away from the old shore-line, the marram furthest inland gradually dies away, and is succeeded by more succulent grasses, and the barren slopes eventually become pastures. There is, as it has long seemed to me, one point of special practical interest in this little plant and its sand-collecting propensities. It is said to be a native of North Africa. Could it not be used for stopping the drifting sands which are continually being blown into the Suez Canal ? The cause of these seaside dunes or sand hummocks, and of the vast areas covered by them, is thus shown to be water sucked up in great quantities by a little unpretending plant. Dry sand adheres to wet sand, and when once it adheres the ever-spreading roots bind and fix it. The heaps of sand are carried thither by the wind, which is the moving agent, and when once the sand-cloud has settled on the hilltops, the grass sprouts through it and prepares it to receive a new layer. The great depth to which the rootstock descends makes the sea-marram quite independent of occasional showers of rain, and therefore it never droops or withers, or suffers as pastures do, from drought. The dry and rigid blades are not affected by the most Bcorching heat reflected from the sand; hence the process of accumulation is always going on, provided, as is commonly the case, there is sufficient wind from tho sea.— ' Longman's Magazine.'