SCURVYGRASS

Scurvygrass growing on cliffs with Thrift.  Borth, May 2021 Scurvygrass on cliffs.  Borth. May 2021	This one's a cliffhanger - sailors At sea sicken for A haven from the waves, Searching the shore, Finding in rocky coves A promise of kindness in its petals, Healing in its heart-shaped leaves.
Old Botanical Print - Scurvygrass	Scurvygrass is salt tolerant and grows extensively by the sea. Containing lots of available Vitamin C, it was used to treat sufferers from scurvy - "those that lie lamentable sick of the scurvies", as Gerard put it in his Herbal - which particularly affected sailors  deprived of fresh vegetables while at sea, so collected as a cure when they made landfall.

 

Sanderlings

Sanderlings on Borth Beach. Photo: Lyndon Lomax

On this stony beach with its undertow of sand
the outcrops of peat are trees from another time
that the retreating sea reveals. At the tideline
they flock, lined up for a while along the edge
bobbing into and over the breaking waves
then gathering and rising as one into air,
dropping further along the beach to line up again.
Listening for the notes of Rhiannon’s birds, that refrain

far out on the horizon, I catch, closer, the sanderlings’ song,
an intermittent liquid sharpness through the hiss of the sea.
So it’s here that the enchantment is, on this beach
where I stand between worlds of rock and water,
in the half-heard call of birds from far arctic tundra
wintering on a coast where time ebbs under.

~*~

“...far out over the sea, their song was clear as if they were with them” 

The Birds of Rhiannon, from the Second Mabinogi.