Glasswort Flowers
8th September 2008, Monday
Further to Cliff’s item on Glasswort I can now report that it is flowering on the saltmarsh at Rye Harbour… but don’t rush to see a great display, because you will be disappointed. The flowers are tiny and you will need a hand lense, or binoculars round the wrong way, to see them!
Zoom in and you start to see minute yellow specks, which are the anthers.
Zooming in again, and in the centre of this image you can see the group of 3 flowers in each segment - 2 anthers are showing well and the middle one may have withered. The flowers are the 3 semi-circular depressions just above the horizontal margin of the segments.
This looks like Salicornia europaea - identifying the 5 species that occur Rye Harbour is very difficult, but the Plant Crib may help.