Plants, continued looking like a smaller, ground-creeping Morning-Glory with pink or pink-striped flowers; the Beach Carrot (Glchnia littoralis), looking somewhat like Angelica creeping prostate on the beach; or the Yellow Sand Verbena (Abronia latifolia), with small, fleshy, glistening leaves (reminiscent of “ice plants") and a cluster of small, bright yellow flowers. On the lowest point on the beach slope, where patchy vegetation gives way to bare sand, only a very few , uniquely adapted plants can survive the severe salt, sand, and exposure. Among the small patches of Dunegrass and European Beachgrass, there the American Searocket (Cakile edentula) with its fleshy, lobed leaves, small purplish- white flowers, and elongated, pulpy green fruits (roughly _ inch long); its close relative, the introduced European Searocket (Cakile maritima) is common and more showy,' with larger flowers, and more deeply lobed leaves. Also, this zone is home to the Seabeach Sandwort (Honkenya peploides), growing in dense mats, with fleshy, bright green leaves growing symmetrically aroun short stalks, topped in the spring by small, r greenish-white flowers. On the northern Oregon coast, we do not yet have much Gorse (Ulex europaeus), that awesomely spiny, invasive, and flammable relative of Scott’s Broom with broom-like yellow flowers. Introduced from the British Isles (where it is sometimes used for hedgerows) Gorse has crowded out all other plants with vast, impenetrable, spiny thickets, covering the dunes and beach margins of the southern Oregon coast. Nitrogen-fixing nodules in its roots allow it to occupy marginal, sandy soils, while oil in its tissues allows gorse fires to burn hot and fast, like a grease fire, resistant to light dousings with water; Gorse was implicated in the 1914 and 1936s fires of Bandon, Oregon, both of which leveled that coastal town. Gorse s range is currently expanding on the coasts of Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia. If you see any Gorse in the vicinity of Cannon Beach, dig it up. Find a secure place and burn it. Show no mercy. For a highly readable, and well illustrated summary, I recommend food Plants of Coastal First Peoples by Nancy Turner, published in 1995 by the University of British Columbia Press in Vancouver. For those who want to dig even deeper into this topic, I would suggest two other books written by Nancy Turner and published by the British Columbia Provincial Museum in Victoria: Plants in British Columbia Indian Technology (1979), and the more technical and comprehensive Ethnobotany o f the Nitinaht Indians ot Vancouver Island (1983). Though both books emphasize tribes on the British Columbia coast, these tribes occupied vegetation zones very similar to the Oregon coast, and they are more trustworthy, on most counts, than l.rna Gunther’s widely-read book, Ethnobotany ol Western Washington. (Little has been written on the ethnobotany of Oregon coast peoples [though such projects are in the works]. While ceremonial and medicinal uses of plants varied somewhat between tribes, the native peoples of coastal Oregon and coastal coast British Columbia used plants in verv similar ways, particularly those plants used for food or in the production of material objects). Explore the shore, and look at its plants! Results may vary. You may not find these plants, or you might find yet others, you might find them unremarkable or you might become a card-carrying phytophile. Regardless, these plants are something to behold; often overlooked as we bound over i -r the dunes and down to the beaches, they ' ^deserve a_ second glance. O R EG O N BOOKS O reg o n A u t h o r s • B o o k s a b o u t O reg o n w it h S e l e c t io n s f r o m t h e p n w 52 NE Hwy 101 Depoe Bay, Oregon 97341 541-765-3293 Let not your tongue cut your throat. §tev>e'& S p e c ia l iz i n g in : Environmentally ¿Friendly Window Cleaning Steve TaMontappic