PLANTS FOR SAND-BINDING PURPOSES.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume III, Issue 278, 5 June 1875, Page 2

PLANTS FOR SAND-BINDING PURPOSES.

Retween San Francisco and the Cliff House, as is well known, and also in other places, the sand of the beach is wafted inland badly, and the. reclamation of sand-downs is becoming important. The Paris Commissioners of San Francisco are taking the matter in hand, and, like wise people, they are studying nature’s method of reclamation and deriving useful hints from it. As the old sand-hills show, Nature there does the work mainly by means of two shrubbery species of Lupine. The particular advantage possessed by these Lupines came to view when some deep cuttings were made through one of these old sand formations ; although the bushes seldom rose above three feet in height, the roots were traced to a depth of more than 25 feet; and they also extend laterally is a corresponding way. As it. is, this deep growth of root which enables these plants to hold their own in drifting sand, penetrating as they do into a stratum unaffected by drought, so, also, it is the looseness of the sand and gravel that allows the roots to penetrate tso promptly and so far. The only thing needful in the way of help is to protect the germinating Lupines from being overwhelmed with sand at the first, through the driving storms of winter and. spring. That is done by sowing barley with the lupine seed ; this, in 10 or 12 days from sowing, gets strong and high enough to hold the drift; and by the time the barley dies off the lupine plants hare got their roots deep enough into the ground ;and their upward growth so well above it as to fix the soil effectually. On our eastern coast, and the shores of our great lakes, these two Lupines would not endure the winter. But our own herbaceous species would do nearly as well. We will also recommend another perennial plant of the same family, the Tephrosia Virginiana of botanists, which affects sandy soils, and which, on account of its long, slender, and very tough roots, is in some parts of the country called catgut. These roots, running horizontally and far, would bind the shifting sand as effectually as certain sand grasses and sedges, and which are used for the same purpose in Europe. There is a sand-willow oh the Californian coast, of insignificant height, the roots of which have been found to extend to a distance of 120 feet from the plant itself.— New York Tribune..