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Western Isles Wildflowers

Western Isles wildflowers is a collection of information about our Hebridean wildflowers including identification hints, traditional herbal uses and general plant lore.

 

Sea Arrow-grass

Triglochin maritima

Gaelic name: Brr a' Mhilltich Mara

Sea Arrow-grass likes to grow along the shore-line and on salt marshes.

That area where the thrift and sea plantain carpets are covered daily by the tide right up to where only the very highest tides go. At first glance it looks a little like a sea plantain flower stalk, but it is generally taller, straighter and has tiny white flowers attached to the stem.

Once you have identified it, usually you can see that the whole area has been colonised by it.

The leaves are slender and straight (linear) and flattened at the tips.

The small modified leaves (carpels) surrounding the swellings behind the flowers are not joined .

The fruits are ovoid, little green bobbles around the top of the stem.

The specimen in this photograph was about 8 inches tall.

Sea Arrow-grass flowers from May to September.

We also get marsh arrow-grass, the other member of the Juncaginaceae family, here in the Western Isles. The two species differ a little, marsh arrow-grass like fairly wet ground, but does not like salt, has thread-like leaves semi-cylindrical all the way to the tips, and long slender fruits. The carpels also join at their tips.

Sea and Marsh Arrow-grass are both native plants of the Western Isles

Photograph
Bernera - Isle of Lewis - Outer Hebrides (Western Isles)
9th August, 2005