A salt-loving plant on the roadside

This may be "old hat" to field botanists, but I was amazed to discover that a pretty halophile (salt-loving) plant species can flourish in a man-made microhabitat.

A week ago I found a small but cute plant with five-petalled pink-tipped flowers growing happily right next to the curb in an untended roadside verge. This was in the Bronx, very near the Bronx Zoo.

This spot is many miles from the ocean. However, it is on a curve that is dangerous in snow or ice conditions, which we get every winter here in NYC. Whenever there is snow and ice, the city sprays the blacktop with a salt and grit mixture, which improves the grip of tires on the road, and helps prevent skidding.

It also means that the very edge of the roadside on a curve gets liberally splattered with a wet salt and sand mixture, on and off for a few months each year.

Of course salt will kill most plants, but in the case of a rugged little species of Sand Spurrey, it appears that the road maintenance workers are accidentally creating a perfect little micro-beach.

Sand Spurreys are flowering plants in the same family as Pinks and Carnations -- they are tiny but pretty, and until humans started spraying roads with salt, these plants basically lived only by the sea, or in any other naturally-occurring salt-rich areas.

I would love to know how the seeds are spread in these man-made conditions -- do they get stuck in the grooves of tires and then fall out again? How does this plant spread from one roadside to another, miles apart?

Posted on 26 de junho de 2016, 01:59 PM by susanhewitt