M is for Marshes, Marsh Mallow, Marsh Samphire, Mudflats ...

Marshes differ depending mainly on their location and salinity.  

Salt Marsh, Scotland

Both of these factors greatly influence the range and scope of animal and plant life that can survive and reproduce in these environments. 

South West Coastal Path;
Dawlish Warren Nature Reserve:
here you can see a Spit, tidal
marshes and muddy mudflats

The three main types of Marsh:

      

a (fresh water) water-logged area round a pond or lake;

     Salt Marsh ... these are located close enough to the shoreline that the motion of tides affects them, and sporadically, they are covered with sea-water. 

Marsh Mallow

    

 Fresh Water Tidal Marshes ... need the stresses of salinity, which give tidal marshes a greater diversity of plant and animal life that live and use this type of environment.

M is for Marsh Mallow, related to the Mallow.  Marsh-Mallow confectionery was once made from its dried, powdered roots, found in the salt-marshes of the Thames Estuary, then taken to London for sale.

Samphire

M is for Marsh Samphire ... many species of which grow on bare mud in salt marshes ... it used to be burnt, like salt-wort, to produce soda ... used in the production of soap and glass. 

As we now know it is a favourite of chefs ... Rock Samphire is another genus ... and they may be muddled ... see Wiki for some interesting snippets ... literary, herbal, culinary ...

Conurbations are in red, Essex county is at the north,
the Thames Estuary and large blue River Thames,
the Hoo Peninsula, Kent - 'the green proboscis';
the Medway 'square estuary' with its
many islands - now quite silted up

M is for Muddy Medway ... I’m not really mentioning specific places in these coastal posts ... but Jo on Food, My Travels and a Scent of Chocolate spent her early years here ... so M for muddy Medway fits nicely!

Pod Razors
live in
sandbanks
and mud flats

Mudflats provide protection and essential nutrients to many species of algae, shellfish, worms, crustaceans and plenty of birds, who come to feed ...

 

Upnor Lower Medway

Yet the Medway area was the major centre and through-route into London and beyond, Henry VIII’s warship dockyards ... the less silted up not so muddy coastline essential in those early days of occupation ...

Red Knot one of the many
marsh/muddy shoreline birds

Culturally there are many authors, artists, travellers, entrepreneurs who have been influenced by their time near the mudflats of the Medway:  Dickens, Darwin, Joseph Conrad describes the view up the Medway from the Thames Estuary in The Mirror on the Sea ...

... while the Medway’s ‘marriage’ to the Thames is given extensive treatment by Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene ...

That is M for Marshes - mulchy Marshes, marine, sweet mellow Marsh Mallow, aromatic Marsh Samphire, Muddy squelchy Medway with its Mudflats ... from Aspects of British Coasts ... 

Hilary Melton-Butcher

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