For an overview of the other species illustrated, please check out my blog on the Wildflowers of Braunton Burrows.

Star moss

Quite a few mosses look starry when viewed from above.  This is because the leaves at the tip of the shoots curve sharply outwards and downwards.  Often they look very different when dry, which is true for the Screwmoss too.

Heath star moss Campylopus introflexus when wet

Heath star moss Campylopus introflexus when dry

Sand hill Screwmoss

Sand hill Screw moss is quite a distinctive species, which isn’t always the case with mosses.  As with other star-like mosses, it has strongly recurved leaves.  This species also has long hyaline hair points.  The leaves curve out, away from the stem when they are wet.  This gives a star-like appearance from above.  As mentioned, other moss species can also look starry from above, but the colours of the Sand hill Screw moss make this species really obvious.

The leaves at the top of the shoot are a bright green.  These gradually become yellower as you travel down the shoot.  The lowest leaves are dark brown.  In effect, this means the moss is a brown carpet, spangled with bright green stars.  The hair points add to the beauty of this colour scheme.

In the wild, much of the moss may be below ground level, hidden in the sand.  For this reason, it’s probably been overlooked in many localities.  The fact that it’s so unobtrusive when dry could add to this.  However, in the recent BSBI atlas, it’s been increasingly recorded inland, especially in East Anglian areas.

For details on how to identify this moss from the BSBI, check out the link to their online handbook.  I use a lot of textbooks too, when it comes to illustrating mosses.  Trying to tally the characteristics I see with those that are species specific is always a test.  I also use FSC foldout guides.

Sand hill Screwmoss: Dry specimens

When dry, the Screwmoss leaves compress against the stalk of the plant.  This turns the green stars into dried out twists.  They look like off cuts of brown wool, and far less engaging than the wet form.

The hair points stay rigid, so the whole moss looks spiky and scruffy.

Luckily for me, the Sand hill screw moss only rarely produces capsules, so that was one less detail to illustrate.

How to illustrate a moss

I’ve been asked to paint mosses before, and have developed a technique that sort of works.  It has to be said, Ive never painted a moss without the specimen in front of me, and I don’t think I’d be able to.

 I’m very short sighted, so take one contact lens out.  This means the world is very blurry, but I can see up close in immaculate detail.  The other eye remains with a lens in, allowing me to see the paper and paint box so I can accurately mix colours.  You can see my nose is almost touching the specimen (Apple fountain moss) in this photo.

I start by drawing the moss up in pencil, from life.  This is exhausting and has to be done all at once, as I’d never find where I paused if I took a break.  You have to draw enough of the moss to give a proper feel for it, but you really don’t want to draw so much that you’re there for ever.

Screwmoss: Wet and Dry

With the Screw moss, there was the added complication of moisture.  I’d been sent a lovely specimen by Simon Norman of FSC Publications, so I arranged this on a dinner plate.  There was sand with the specimen, so I spread this out below.  I kept one half of the plate really wet.  The other I allowed to dry out completely.  As I drew the wet specimen, I had to continually add water.  The moss began to curl up really soon as the water evaporated.

For clarity’s sake, I inserted a sheet of white paper to isolate the discreet tuft of moss I was drawing.  I also got one shoot and one leaf and drew these under my dissecting microscope. Next I did the same with an isolated leaf.  As described in the handbook, there were indeed colour-less patches of hyaline cells at either side of the midrib.

After submitting the rough, I waited for feedback and kept everything crossed that no alterations would be requested.

The photo below, of Woolly Hair fringe moss, shows how small these illustrations are, and why I need to use a tiny brush.  And why making alterations requires a full re-draw.

Woolly Fringe moss Racomitrium lanuginosum

Adding colour to the screwmoss

It was an enormous relief to get the go-ahead on the moss.

The challenge was to create a suitably complex background to offset the green star tips.  This was done by painting the initial lower stem leaves in golden browns.  Then blocking in the background with a darker brown.  Once dry, I added more layers of leaves and stems to these places between the other stems.  I kept working into these spaces, trying to give them more and deeper layers.

Finally, once this background had enough depth, tone, and texture, I mixed a bright green and added the green shoot tops.

The colour is not entirely true to life.  It’s too bright and too pale.  But had I echoed the actual darkness of the hues, the illustration was have been visually illegible.  A diluted top wash of Dr Martins PH Yellow light ink helped bring the browns and greens together, and added a kick of colour.

Illustrating one shoot and one leaf

This was another challenge,  I’m used to drawing whilst looking through a microscope.  But painting?  There was a lot of staring, colour mixing, checking, staring….  Eventually I got the colours I wanted.  these altered almost for each leaf on the shoot.  Less green at the base, full verdant hues at the shoot tip.

I outlined the hyaline leaf points with a grey paint, and on the leaves I added the side points to them.  These were magnified something like 15x or more.

Again, drawing from life makes this job so much easier.  Figuring out one leaf from the next in a photo would be horribly challenging.

Conclusion

When I was finished, I was really pleased with the results.  The illustration had the thickness of texture and depth of space I wanted, especially in the wet specimen.  The dry version looked suitably twisted and apressed, and I think the substrate added to the feeling of dessication.  The details and dry specimen are illustrated on the same page, the wet one is on another sheet.

These moss illustrations took as long as four of the other botanical illustrations done for the Braunton Burrows wildflowers guide.  But there’s something infinitely enjoyable about having to work and observe extremely hard. I was left with a feeling of a job well done.  And that’s why every time I paint moss, I find myself ready to take on more species.  It’s a challenge, but one that feels possible to overcome.  If you have a specimen right in front of you, and a small enough paintbrush!

Sphagnum capillifolium

For more on my approach to painting moss, check out my earlier blogs,  One on the basic anatomy of moss, another on the processes involved, another on the step by step processes involved in illustrating Sphagnum tenellum, a showcase of my moss illustrations, and another on sketching the Heath star moss Campylopus introflexus.

The post Sand hill Screwmoss: An illustration challenge appeared first on Lizzie Harper.

However, I really enjoyed illustrating such a pretty and diverse selection of plants.

Evening Primrose Oenothera biennis

It’s rather surprising that I’ve not illustrated this blousy yellow flower earlier, it’s common and it also grows in my garden.

Painting yellow flowers has its challenges.  How to make the petals look clean and crisp, but still show lights and darks?  How to avoid them looking orange or green as you add the shadows?  (For more on this, please look at my Painting yellow flowers blog).

One of the lovely details of this plant is that the stem has glandular hairs on the stem, emerging from scarlet spots (which explains the close-up).

This plant has flowers that only open at dusk, hence the name.  They’re pollinated by moths, butterflies and bees on the look out for nectar.

Evening primrose seeds are rich in oils which are used to treat Premenstrual symptoms and some skin complaints, such as psoriasis.

Sea stock Matthiola inuata

This is a really pretty plant, and capturing the soft green of the leaves meant using a lot of white, something I usually avoid.  I’ve not seen it growing in the wild (it’s not that common), so had to work from photos.

Sea stock flowers in the late summer in the UK, and grows in the shingle line, just in front of vegetated dunes.  It grows alongside Sea holly, Horned poppy, and Marram grass.

The basal leaves have distinctly wavy margins.  The pale leaves and four-petalled mauve leaves make it an easy one to identify as it’s not similar to other sand dune species.

Sea Pansy Viola tricolor ssp. curtsii

I had some trouble with this plant, as different botanists had different ideas as to whether or not the flowers had purple on their petals.  After consulting with the botanists and ecologists working at Braunton Burrows, we settled on the flowers having all yellow lower petals.  The petals have purple striations, but the lowest petal is seldom blue or violet.  This conflict between different botanist’s ideas is not uncommon.  It’s something, as an illustrator, you have to negotiate with care.

The growth habit is low, and sprawling.  Often in the wild these plants are partially buried in the sand, which is something I couldn’t easily represent in a cut-to-white illustration.

The sepals are longer than they are wide, and the whole plant has a bushy appearance.  For more on the Sea pansy vs the Field pansy, check out the excellent Wildflower finder page.

Lesser Hawkbit Leontodon saxatilis

The Hawkbits are always a big challenge as they’re easily confused with Hawk-weeds and Cats-ear.  In fact, all the yellow dandelion-like plants can be tricky to tell apart.  You need to have good guidance from the experts, and decent image reference (or the plant itself to work from).

In this case, the leaves have forked hairs (you need a microscope to see this) and the under side of the petals are often flushed a greyish purple.

The leaves are slightly blueish and form a basal rosette.  They have wavy edges.  The stems don’t have bracts or leaves.

The seeds are distinctive too, as there are two types.  On the outside are achenes with almost no pappas.  The inside seeds have much more elaborate pappas with lateral hairs.

It’s important to add these details to an identification illustration as they can be really helpful when it comes to telling similar species apart.

For more on Lesser Hawkbit, visit the Naturespot site which is an excellent resource for UK animal and plant species.

Portland spurge Euphorbia portlandica

This pretty little plant, stocky and low-growing, isquite localised.  It grows on sea-facing sand dunes, including Branuton Burrows.

Telling this spurge from other species is less tricky that you may imagine, although they live in the same habitats.  It’s a matter of size.  Sea spurge Euphorbia paralias is much taller, and scarcely branched.  Out Portland spurge is a small plant with lots of branching stems.  Truth be told, this illustration probably needed a few more branching shoots.

Sea spurge also flowers later in the season and has less yellow flowers.  The bracts below the flowers have a tiny point which is absent in sea spurge.  They also have quite obvious central ribs, if you turn the bracts over.  .

I very much enjoyed working on the non-flowering shoot, there’s something intensely satisfying about all those closely packed leaves.  As with Sea spurge, the stems are often flushed crimson.  Some mid-stem leaves sometimes have this colouring too.

For a good comparison between Sea and Portland spurge, check out the Wildflower finder’s page.

Round-headed Club-rush Scirpoides holoschoenus

One of the rarest plants illustrated for this commission is the Round-headed Club-rush.  I was very lucky to have eminent botanical illustrator Christina Hart-Davies lend me some preparatory sketches she’d done of this species, years ago.  Working with her reference is reassuring.  She doesn’t draw things wrong.

This is quite a substantial plant, growing to 3ft tall.  It can be identified by the clumped, round seeds and single elongate bract below the flowering stems.  The seed-heads are in globe0-shaped groups, with lateral ones emerging from one central one.  They are borne on short pedicels.

As many of you know, I love illustrating rushes, grasses, and sedges; so this was a treat to work on.  the main challenge is getting the edge of the straight stems right.  It usually involves holding my breath!

Although really quite rare in the wild in the UK it can be bought for garden ponds and marshy habitats, so perhaps its distribution is set to increase?

Bog pimpernel Anagallis tenella

This is probably the prettiest of all the plants I illustrated for this commission.  The veined little flowers are almost round, opposite leaves are really charming.  Again, it’s a plant I’ve never seen growing in the wild, however, I’m now keen to go and seek it out.

The flowers are very fragile, and have longditudinal veins on their petals.  Inside, the stamens form a filamentous froth that looks fuzzy and white.  As with many dune plants, they grow by creeping across the substrate using rhizomes.  They root all along these stems, giving them a more secure hold of the substrate.

The flowers have a long flowering season, from May through September.  They close at night, reopening at dawn the following day.

Seeds grow within the calyx of sepals, as a capsule.

Although mostly found in marshes, they appear on west-facing sand dunes too, as with Braunton burrows.  For more on this pretty little plant, check out First Nature’s blog post.

Western eyebright Euphrasia tetraquetra

When I read this flower’s name, no lie, my heart sank.  The Eyebrights (Euphrasia) are notoriously difficult to tell apart.  They have tiny leaves and little white flowers, and often small details such as growth habit is used to tell similar species apart.  The BSBI does have a handbook on them (which always suggests a challenging family group), but unfortuneatly I’m yet to get hold of a copy. It’s BSBI Handbook 18 and is called Eyebrights of Britain and Ireland, by Metherell & Rumsey, and is the result of years of painstaking research.

I used the online form of this handbook as a starting point in my research. It’s also known as the Seacliff or Maritime eyebright, and has colonised the USA.  Many of the sites I consulted were American wildflower ones (such as the Native Plant Trust).  This is not uncommon, there’s a lot of cross-colonisation of native wildflower species between Europe and the Americas.

The main indicators here are the growth habit, very condensed leaves, and stocky.  The leaves are crammed together towards the top of the plant.  It’s branches and the leaves are frequently tinged purple.  As with other eyebrights, the leaf shape is a useful species indicator, although not fool-proof.  The fact that many are recurved is also helpful.

But in truth, when I was done with the eyebright I let out a sigh of relief.

Sharp rush Juncus acutus

I started off badly with this plant, mistakenly thinking it was the Sharp-flowered rush, Juncus acutiflorus.  Plants with similar names is one thing, but when the latin names are also very similar…it’s easy to make errors.

Sharp Flowered Rush Juncus acutiflorus

No.  The Sharp rush is a different plant altogether.

It grows across the UK, colonising damp spots, and grows across most continents.

It’s easy to recognize for a couple of reasons.  The first is how big it is.  It’s much taller than other rushes, reaching up to 100cm.  It also is a distinctive dark green colour, with clear longditudinal ridges.  But perhaps the most striking feature is how stiff and sharp the leaves are.  Reference book after reference book referred to this, and many begged keen botanists to look out for their eyes as the tips can do serious damage.  In Australia it’s considered an invasive weed, and children are warned away from it because of the sharp spikes (Brickfield’s site).

Sand hill Screwmoss Syntrichia ruraliformis

My favourite plant in the list is the Sandhill Screwmoss.  I’ve written a short, separate blog (!LINK!) on this as I was so taken by the species. This extraordinary moss looks utterly different depending on whether its wet or dry.

When wet it has distinct green star-like tips to its’ shoots.  The mass of the moss is brown or yellowish.  Apical points make the moss look slightly hairy, or whitened.

But when dry, it all curly up on itself and looks like little twists of wool.  Such a massive transformation is not unheard of, but it’s very striking.  I definitely had to illustrate this species twice.  Luckily, thanks to Simon Norman (who works at FSC Publications), I had living specimens to work from.

Mosses are always the hardest species to illustrate, but I do love them.  Perhaps because they require such a high level of concentration and detail.

Early Marsh Orchid Dactylorhiza incarnata ssp coccinea

The Early marsh orchid was interesting and the flowers are almost scarlet.  This is rather uncommon in nature, unless the flowers are pollinated by birds.  Insects (unlike birds) aren’t so good at seeing bright red on the spectrum.  For more on how plants make different pigments, and why, check out the Cambridge University Botanic gardens video by Beverley Glover.

Orchids are such peculiar plants, and these are no different.  Each flower is fully twisted around to provide a good landing-site for an insect.  So they’re upside-down.  I spent a long time on this plant, and made a step by step youtube film of me illustrating it, along with a blog.

It’s probably the most unusual plant on the list, because of the colour.  I spent a while researching basic orchid anatomy before illustrating it.  I’ve painted them before, drawing what I see, but this time I wanted to understand the form.

Although I was satisfied with the finished product, it wasn’t one of my favourites of the finished illustrations.

Conclusion

The diversity of species needed for this job was a treat.  We had a few pretty flowers alongside the challenge of moss and rushes.  Technical work with plenty of research was needed for the Sea pansy, hawkbit and eyebright.  I enjoyed almost all of the plants required.  And now I just have to be patient while the text is being written.  And look forward to seeing the finished identification chart as and when it’s produced.

The post Wildflowers of Braunton Burrows appeared first on Lizzie Harper.

Halophytes are plants that tolerate or thrive in salty conditions.  I recently finished the illustrations for a chart of seaside flowers, and got to wondering how these plants can survive in these hostile habitats?  Another job, illustrating stamps for a Seaside flowers issue, added to my interest.

This blog had me scouring the internet, and getting more and more fascinated by what I found.  However, I am no expert, and would refer interested readers to the bibliography at the end of the blog for references and further reading.

Sea Bindweed Calystegia soldanella

Salt damage

Salt damages most plants as it messes up the way cells absorb water.  A plant which isn’t adapted for salty (or haline) conditions wouldn’t last long in a salt marsh or coastal area.  Salt water can reduce plant growth and photosynthesis.  It leads to an imbalance of nutrients and ions.  It alters plant hormone production and action.  Most obviously, it makes it hard for plants to regulate their water balance.

Thrift Armeria maritima

Halophytes

Some plants have evolved to survive these harsh conditions.  These are the Halophytes.  They can tolerate a range of salty environments, from salt-marshes to dry and salty deserts.  Their adaptations help them shrug off the effects of salt spray, and allow them to live in soils saturated with salty water.  It’s not every plant that can do this.  Only 1 – 2 % of the world’s flora are halophytes.  Of these, “only 0.25% are reportedly able to complete their life cycles in Saline soils” (Flowers et al 1990, New Phytologist 1990)

(Plants which can’t tolerate salt are called Glycophytes.  This literally translates from the Latin as “Sweet loving plants”.)

Types of Halophyte

There are various classifications of Halophytes, mostly depending on what concentrations of salt they can survive.  There are Obligate halophytes, plants which need salt to grow.  An example of this is the Glasswort, Salicornia.

Common Glasswort Salicornia europaea

There are many more Faculative halophytes.  These plants can tolerate salt, but will also thrive in non-salty conditions.

Some halophytes need wet soil or salt-marshes to survive.  These are termed Hydro-halophytes.  A mangrove tree is the most obvious example.

Mangrove swamp – a haline habitat

Xero-halophytes thrive in dry and salty soils, such as deserts.  They can handle unpredictable rains as well as salty soils.  The Frankincense tree is an example.

Adaptations to Saline environments

Although there aren’t an enormous number of halophytes, they’re distributed across lots of plant families.  It’s believed that the adaptations needed to survive these inhospitable habitats have evolved independently on many occasions.  The fact that so many species have ended up with similar coping mechanisms is yet another example of convergent evolution.

Adaptations: Being a Succulent

Lots of halophytes are succulents.  This means that their stems and leaves are fleshy and watery.  Succulent plants have fewer cells, and these cells are longer than those in other plants.

Hottentot fig Carpobrotus edulis

Salt absorbs water, so it’s vital to counteract this.  In succulents, moisture is preserved using lots of these water bearing cells.  These watery cells manage to dilute the concentration of salt in the sap of the cell.  Thin cell walls allow each cell to swell and accommodate its watery burden.

English stonecrop Sedum anglicum

Adaptations: Small leaves

Halophyte leaves are excellent at counter-acting the desiccating effects of salt.  Many halophyte plants have tiny leaves.  These have a small surface area, so less water is lost through transpiration.  Lots of species have few and small stomata.  Again, this helps the plant cling onto water.

Lesser Sea spurrey Spergularia marina

Though small, leaves may be thick, and succulent.  The ratio of water-storing space to surface area is high.

Biting Stonecrop Sedum acre

Thicker epidermal layers are seen in some halophytes, and many have a thick, waxy cuticle which helps to waterproof the leaves.  However, just because plants (like sedums) have a thick waxy cuticle, this does not necessarily mean they can tolerate salty conditions.  Some can, others can not.

Remember, leaves need to keep the water inside, but they also need to protect the plant from the external damage salt spray can inflict.  The thicker epidermis and cuticle do both.

Some halophytic plants sport leaves with low levels of chlorophyll.  Perhaps this contributes to the blue-ish hue of many of their leaves?

Sea Kale Crambe maritima

Adaptations: Secreting salt & Salt glands

Salt levels can be regulated using salt glands.  These excrete salt, either direct onto the leaf surface, or into a discreet gland.  These can be vacuoles of bladder cells, and are often hidden just below the surface of the epidermis.  In some species, these glands burst; in others they break off and fall from the plant, carrying their toxic salt burden with them.

These salt bladders accommodate the build-up of salt or other ions, and allow a plant to exclude certain elements from its tissues.

Sea lavender species have salt glands just below the level of the epidermal cells.

Sea Lavender Limonium vulgare

Salt glands may be specialised Trichomes (outgrowths from the epidermis of a plant).  Lots of coastal plants have greyish blue stems and leaves.  In many cases, they are covered with a wide variety of trichomes.  Some are simple, some are un-branched.  These not only affect leaf temperature and aid water economy, but contribute to that distinctive hue.

Yellow-horned Poppy Glaucium flavum

Adaptations: Tough seeds

Seeds of halophytes have been widely researched, and their viability and ability to germinate in salty conditions is amazing.

Many have thick and waxy seed coats.  Seeds may be large.  However, it is the hormonal regulation and patterns of germination which are most interesting.

Germination times are often very fast, and times of reproduction and germination can be tightly controlled by plant hormones.  Recovery of germination after salt-stress or drought (in xerohylophtes) is rapid.  Flowers and Colmer have done extensive research on this topic.

Greater Sea spurrey Spergularia media

Greater Sea spurrey, whose seed dormancy patterns have been examined extensively by Ungar.

Adaptations: Amazing roots

Roots have an important role to play in salt regulation.  Some halophytes produce pneumatophores, structures which protrude from salty water into the air (see my blog on Root variety for more on this).

Other plants have extensive networks of roots which grow into less salty substrates.  Adventitious roots allow for horizontal growth, which could allow a plant to grow directly above saltier soils.

Marram grass Ammophila arenaria

Adaptations: Accumulate salt then die

A more extreme solution is just to accumulate salt…then die.  Some rush (Juncus) species do this.  They have no means of regulatiing their salt balance.  However, this doesn’t seem to stop them from colonising salty environments and reproducing successfully.

Why choose a salty environment?

Having looked at adaptations to this hostile environment, one has to ask, “why grow there?”  Clearly, the salt is problematic and has required an armory of evolutionary coping mechanisms.  So why spend that energy to exploit such an environment?

Firstly, there’s not a lot of competition.  As stated earlier, 95% of plants can’t survive saline habitats.  That’s 95% less potential competitors for your niche.

Haline habitats may also be lower in predators, and may help keep numbers of vermin down.  In the literature there’s also some suggestion that salty environments can help prevent disease, although I didn’t examine this fully.

Examples of Halophytes

So what plants are halophytes?  It partly depends on your definition, but below are some examples.

In the grass family Poaceae, Marram grass and Cord Grass grow on salty sand dunes.

English Cord-grass Spartina anglica

The Amaranthaceae family includes the obligate halophyte Glasswort.  It also includes Saltwort Salsola kali.

Saltwort

Other members of this family are Pig-weeds, Goose-foot, and Beet.

Sea Beet Beta vulgaris maritima

In the Plumbaginaceae family there’s Sea Lavender

In the Legumes we have the Sea pea, Lathyrus japonicus

Sea pea Lathyrus japonicas

There are databases of halophytic plants, including the Halophyte Database and a list of salt-tolerant plants from the Biosalinity Awareness Project

Why are Halophytes so important in 2020?

Halophytes aren’t just fascinating plants.  They could be vital to us humans, in our rapidly changing world.  Most crops are glycophytes, and are salt-sensitive.  With many places at increasing risk from rising sea levels, crops which are resistant to salty water could have an important role to play.  Research is being done to see if cross-breeding and genetic modification could help develop new salt-resistant crop plants.

(Sea Sandwort, below, is edible.  However, I found no evidence it was being trialled as a salt-resistant crop…as yet!)

Sea Sandwort Hockenya peploides

Salt-affected and land made toxic with heavy metals areas could be cleaned with the help of halophytes.  Some halophytes are able to regulate the ions entering their xylem stream.  These ions include sodium and other elements.    Scientists such as Lutts & Lefevre are researching their potential role as a way to clean heavy metals from the soil. (Lutts & Lefevre 2015  How can we take advantage of halophyte properties to cope with heavy metal toxicity in salt-affected areas?  Annals of Botany 2015).  Halophytes may prove vital in these processes of phytoremediation.

Ecologically, halophytes have an important role to play with land reclamation.  Their networks of tough roots and ability to withstand tidal flooding make them perfect candidates to help re-colonise saline lands.

Sea buckthorn Hippophae rhamnoides

With halophytes helping humanity reclaim salty land, and produce salt-tolerant crops for a rising population in an environmentally changing world; I think it would be hard to over-estimate their importance to our future.

Conclusion

With their ingenious adaptations and ability to colonise salty habitats, halophytes are fascinating.  Couple this with their potential as an important aid to humanity, and they become ever more deserving of our attention.

Below is a list of further reading.  There are many nuances to current research which hasn’t been covered in this blog; issues relating to biochemistry and seed viability amongst them.  Hopefully the bibliography below will allow an interested reader to pursue the topic further.

(Many of these original illustrations are available to buy, just search for them in by name in the “Original Illustrations for Sale” section of my website).

Bibliography

Colmer & Flowers, 2008  Salinity tolerance in halophytes  New Phytologist  179

Dassanayake & Larkin, 2017 Making Plants Break a Sweat: The structure, function, & evolution of plant Salt glands Frontiers of Plant Science 2017

Flowers & Colmer,  2015 Plant Salt Tolerance: Adaptations in Halophytes   Annals of Botany, February 2015

Flowers et al, 1990   Salt tolerance in the halophytic wild rice, Porteresia coarctata Tateoka  New Phytologist  1990 

Gonzalez, 2019 Adaptation of Halophytes to Different Habitats  DOI: 10.5772/intechopen 87056 link

Gupta, Halophyte Plants Biology Discussion 

Lutts & Lefevre 2015  How can we take advantage of halophyte properties to cope with heavy metal toxicity in salt-affected areas?  Annals of Botany 2015

Nikita, Halophytes: Classification and Characters of Halophytes Biology Discussion

Reddy, Halophytes: Meaning and Types Biology Discussion

Ungar, I. A. & Binet, P., Factors influencing seed dormancy in Spergularia media, Aquatic Botany, 1, 45, 1975.

Ventura & Sagi, 2015 The Development of Halophyte-based agriculture: past & present  Annals of Botany 2015

The post Halophytes: Salt Tolerant Plants appeared first on Lizzie Harper.

What I love about these jobs is the enormous amount you learn about species you may never have noticed before.  In this blog, I’m going to showcase a few of these lovely plants, and what seaside habitats you’re likely to find them in.  To see the entire list, you’ll have to wait til the chart is published and buy a copy!

For more on Coastal Flowers, you might want to take a look at my recent blog on Halophytes (salt loving plants) and their amazing adaptations to a tough habitat.

Categorising Coastal Flowers

The flower species I illustrated are categorised according to their habitat by FSC.  Although all the habitats are near the coast, the species growing in each are quite site specific.  We have coastal flowers of cliffs, sand, mud, and shingle.

Coastal Flowers: Cliffs

I’m familiar with most of the species that appeared in this habitat because of time spent walking the coastal path in Pembrokeshire. This means that there are lots of details in my botanical sketchbooks, and this helps me to draw these plants out of season.

I’m particularly taken with the Sheep’s bit Jasione montana and have always loved Thrift Armeria maritima.

Sheep’s bit looks like scabious and is sometimes called Sheep’s bit scabious.  However, it’s a member of the Campanulaceae family, so don’t be fooled!  It has that distinctive pale blue colour which is so hard to capture in watercolour.

Sheep’s bit

This plant can be told apart from other scabious species because of its rather domed flowering head and paler hue.  It grows on cliff-top grassland and can carpet a cliff with lilac blue.  Like lots of other wild flowers, it looks amazing if you examine it under UV light. These patterns help attract pollinators whose vision includes the ultraviolet spectrum.

Thrift is another flower that can carpet a cliff-top.  It grows from rounded cushions of straggly linear leaves, and is sometimes called Sea-pink or Cliff clover.  It grows on rocky outcrops, and can look incredible when next to golden-yellow coastal lichens.

I love the delicate way the individual flowers in the flowering head overlap one another, and jostle for position.  However, getting the structure and anatomy of these right is always tricky.

As with the Sheep’s bit, Thrift is also grown as a garden plant.

Thrift

Other plants in this habitat include Buck’s horn plantain Plantago maritima and the elegant and early-flowering Spring squill Scilla verna.

Buck’s horn plantain

Spring squill

Coastal Flowers: Sand

These flowers were less known to me, although I’ve always loved Sea bindweed Calystegia soldanella and illustrate it often.

Sea Bindweed

An instantly recognizable plant is the Sea Holly, Erygium martimum.  It’s got such a distinctive colouring, all pale blues and grey-ish greens.  This colour is due to its thick waxy leaf cuticle which helps it regulate water in salty environments.  The leaf shape takes some working out, and having the network of lacy white veins against the glaucous leaf blade is really hard to illustrate.

The flowering head looks like a thistle or teasel, and produces gorgeous blue flowers.  Again, not easy to illustrate!

Sea Holly roots can grow deep, and used to be sugared and sold as sweets!

Sea Holly

Common Restharrow Ononis repens is a gorgeous little plant.  It’s low lying and forms mats across the sand, studded with bright pink flowers.  Another similar species, Spiny Restharrow, bears impressive prickles, but this species only has the occasional spine.

It’s leaves are blueish, and a little greasy to touch.  I think the gradation of pink to white on the flowers is stunning, and was really fun to illustrate.

Common Restharrow

And why is it called Restharrow?  The plant has an incredibly tough and thick mat of roots that anchor it, and these would stop a plough (or a harrow) in its tracks.

Another of the Sandy habitat flowers I loved illustrating was Sea rocket, Cakile maritimum.  There’s something very elegant about the four-petalled flowers of cruciferous plants, and this species is no exception.

Sea Rocket

Coastal Flowers: Mud

Flowers growing in the mud and estuarine habitats are all pretty new to me.  Partly cause I’ve not spent much time in salt-marshes, and partly because when I do, the flowers are often inaccessible out on the mud flats.  It was lovely to get the chance to learn more about them.

Sea aster is a daisy-like flower with pale blue flowering heads.  It grows in clumps along muddy banks of estuary and salt-marsh habitats, where the mud is a little drier.  Like some of the other coastal flowers in this blog, it is prolific and can make a muddy bay pale blue with its flowers.

Sea Aster

Danish scurvy-grass Cochlearia danica was new to me.  It’s a pretty little plant with mauve flowers and a basal rosette of sprawling leaves.  Related to the cabbage, it’s entirely edible, and very high in vitamin C.  This explains the name; sailors would eat it to ward off scurvy.

Danish Scurvy-grass

This plant (and it’s relative the Common Scurvy-grass, Cochlearia officianalis) are thriving.  Roadside verges get sprayed with salt in the winter, and this creates the perfect salt-rich habitat for these opportunistic little plants.  In fact, scurvy-grass has colonised more new habitats in the last 50 years than any other British wild plant (Plantlife).

Common Scurvy-grass

Coastal Flowers: Shingle

I recognized lots of the flowers on the shingle habitat list as I spent some years in Selsey, near Pagham Nature reserve.  The beaches are all shingle, and very beautiful too.

The hardest one to illustrate was the Sea carrot, Daucus carota gummifer. Umbeliifers are really hard to draw as there is so much detail in both the leaves and the flowering heads, and the overall shape needs to be spot-on for identification.  In fact, I’m going on a day course this year to learn more about Umbellifers and the Apiaceae.  I’m hoping it’ll help me when I next have to paint one of these beautiful plants.

Sea carrot

The flowering heads will often have just one or perhaps two isolated dark purple flowers in amongst the creamy ones.  It’s very strange, and very pretty.  In bud, these umbels look reddish, but the petals and flowers are creamish white once open.

Although the plant has leaves that smell of carrots, their roots are very different.

Sea mayweed Tripleurospermum maritimum was entirely new to me.  I’ve illustrated other mayweeds, and was keen to know how this species differed.  The main difference seems to relate to where it grows.  Mostly along the top of the drift-line, this mayweed tolerates salt levels that would kill other similar species.

Sea Mayweed

There’s lots of variation in leaf thickness and stem shape, but the plant is generally stouter than its most similar cousin, Scentless mayweed.  It has branched wiry leaves, and its stem can be flushed purple.

Other flowers in this habitat include the Sea pea Lathyrus japonicus.

Sea Pea

Conclusion

I loved this job and can’t wait for the chart featuring my illustrations of coastal flowers to be produced.  How fortunate to have a job where you do what you love, and you get to learn and assimilate new botanical facts with each new day!  As always, I’m indebted to the Naturespot, Wildflowerfinder, and Wildlife Trust websites which are treasure troves of neatly packaged, botanically accurate information.

Yellow horned-poppy

The post Coastal Flowers: Illustrating a Flower Guide appeared first on Lizzie Harper.

The Pembrokeshire Coastal Path

We walk from Manorbier to Barafundle beach.  This stretch is gorgeous, taking in empty golden beaches and vertiginous cliffs.  It’s also varied.  You can see the coastal path weaving over sandstone and dunes.  The second half is among limestome clifftops.  There are at least two totally different habitats and associated plant species.

Coastal flowers in the sandstone

In the sandstone there are remnants of bluebells.  Tall sorrel and gorse with golden flowers, smelling of coconut, are in bloom.   Purple Bell heather is out.  Tiny flashes of blue come from the milkworts.  Clumps of foxglove stand purple against the sea and the bracken, each with a few bumble bees popping in and out of the tubular flowers. We find beautiful pink seaside centaury.

Seaside centaury (Centaurium littorale)

Sandstone habitat inland

A little way in from the coast, you find red ant hills topped with clusters of white saxifrage.    Greater knapweed and gorgeous Yorkshire fog grass grow here. In the little streams winding to the sea are yellow flag, water mint, and clouds of umbelliferae.

Sand dunes

We pass an area of dunes where six-spot burnet moths flutter up, flashing their scarlet and black wings.   The ground is covered in pale yellow Burnet rose and musk storksbill.  Binding round are the shell-pink blooms of the Sea bindweed .  I make a mental note to study and illustrate the rose and storkbill soon.

The aptly named pyramidal orchid are out in profusion.

Pyramidal orchid (Anacamptis pyramidalis)

Ivy Broomrape

I find a plant which is new to me.  It looks parasitic, as it isn’t green and photosynthesising.  My trusty Collins Flower Guide helps me i.d. the Ivy broomrape. I shall make a full illustration and study of it soon.  It parasitizes ivy on coastal dunes, hence the lack of chlorophyll.  (Yet another amazing parasite; it would qualify for inclusion in my blog on parasites…)

Ivy broomrape (Orobanche hederae)

Flowers of Limestone habitats

Suddenly, the path crosses to limestone and everything is different.  The grass on the towering grey cliffs is cropped, with daisies spangling the turf and buttercups filling every hollow.  The cliff tops are frosted pink with thrift. Limestone is garlanded a glowing gold from the lichen.

This habitat is shown in this private commission I did of oystercatchers on the cliff-tops in Pembrokeshire. (Click for a blog on this). It shows a limestone habitat.  Although the plant species are representative; a commoner bird would be a razorbill, a chough, or a puffin.

Colours of the cliff tops

All over the cliffs sorrel  grows, and its tiny red flowers make the grass scarlet. in this profusion, tall and erect, stand clumps of Vipers bugloss.  The blue of these petals is probably my favourite colour on earth.

Vipers bugloss (Echium vulgare)

It also happens to be one of the flowers I painted for the Collins flower guide, so it’s good to see I got it right!

Throughout, the cliffs are starred with the deep yellow of birds foot trefoil.  This ensures a good supply of blue butterflies flitting through the summery coastal sky.

Birds foot trefoil (Lotus corniculatus)

Clifftop scenery

Cliffs covered with thrift, near Freshwater east beach, Pembrokeshire

Next weeks blog will consider some of the amazing insects and other animals we see.  It’s not called “The Butterfly Coast” for nothing!

The post Pembrokeshire coastal plants appeared first on Lizzie Harper.

This week’s blog is a collaboration with guest botany blogger Karen .  Her original blog post can be found here.  It’s all about another UK coastal plant, Marram grass.  This salt-loving halophyte has a vital role in sand dune ecology.

Marram Grass, Ammophila arenaria, at sunset in summer on Burnham-on-Sea’s beach

© Karen Netto (Andrews)

Marram Grass, Ammophila arenaria (Poaceae), grows readily on sand dunes across the UK and helps them withstand erosion from wind and rain.  It is a plant that binds sand together and makes it possible for other coastal plants to colonise dunes.  It dominates mobile sand dunes.

Marram Grass defeats the high tide; the evidence is the irregular channel full of driftwood that runs along the base of the dunes.  I visited Burnham-on-Sea after a winter storm, and was surprised at how heavy some of the pieces of driftwood were, discarded high up the beach. Some were large, long branches. They convey the power of tides and the sea to me.

Marram grass roots

A tight network of Marram Grass roots was exposed where the sand occasionally gave way. The Marram Grass was already recovering, putting up fresh shoots. Sand moved by the next wind and storm will bury these roots again.  Roots seem not to be exposed as often in the calmer summer months.

Network of exposed Ammophila arenaria, Marram Grass roots after the stormy weather  © Karen Netto (Andrews)New green shoot among the exposed roots © Karen Netto (Andrews)

Below is a detail showing the thread-like roots which hold the sand dunes together, along with the rhizome.  These horizontal roots help colonise the dunes, putting up shoots and helping tie the substrate together.

Succession

There are many different levels and stages of vegetation and colonisation in a sand dune.  The plants below are from the dunes at Burnham-on-Sea.

Seasonal variations occur too, there’s a wider variety of plants to see in the summer when the salt spray is less fierce and does less damage.  For more on plants which tolerate salty conditions (Halophytes), please take a look at Lizzie’s blog).

We’ve seen that the Marram grass is the first line of defence, stopping the sea in its tracks at the base of the dunes, and binding the sand together with its roots.  In winter, following a storm, what’s growing a little further up the dunes?

 

Second line of Defence

Sea Buckthorn, Hippophae rhamnoides offers the second line of defence against the sea. It grows into a tough and impenetrable thicket.

Sea Buckthorn, Hippophae rhamnoides with leaves and berries

Sea Buckthorn and its berries survive the winter storms, although it is leaf-less through the colder months.  Euphorbia paralias, Sea Spurge had also weathered the storm in patches, protected by Marram Grass. Where it wasn’t protected, it showed signs of burning from the salt spray.

Euphorbia paralias, Sea Spurge in summer

Other species only appear to thrive during the spring and summer, when the sea spray is less violent and life is a little less extreme.

Sea Radish, Raphanus raphanistrum ssp. maritimus is common in summer but scarce and bedraggled in winter.

Raphanus raphanistrum ssp. maritimus, Sea Radish in summer

Sea Rocket Cakile maritima and Prickly Saltwort Salsola kali are abundant in summer, but none was seen on my post-storm winter walk.  These plants are all well-adapted to the salty, sandy environment and will no doubt be back next season.

Sea Rocket, Cakile maritima

Prickly Saltwort Salsola kali.  

After my post-storm walk, I returned home with extra admiration for the resilience of Marram Grass compared to man-made, concrete sea walls.

The post Marram Grass as a Natural Sea Defence appeared first on Lizzie Harper.