looduskalender.ee

Lymegrass and sea sandwort. Harilaid

 

 

The sea sandwort flowers on natural sandy shores – white eyes looking up. You can find the plant directly on the sand, somewhere near the bluish-green sharp leaves of the lymegrass. The stems are fleshy (growing on sand you need to store humidity in every which way), the leaves regularly arranged in four rows.

 

The small flowers are modest in appearance; some sea sandwort plants only have female flowers,  others male ones. The female flowers have traces of the lost stamens, and the male flowers of the disappeared pistil. Consequently it has turned out through ages to be more favourable for the plant to grow flowers of separate sexes on separate plants  - these are dioecious plants.

 

Sea sandwort before flowering