The season was not sufficiently advanced for the flowering of many seaside plants; but there was quite enough to rejoice the eyes of botanists who had escaped from the ghastly spring season of the North when the days grow longer, but only more dreary, and the bitter east wind parches and blasts the young leaves and blossoms that are tempted to their destruction by the mildness of our winter weather. As everywhere on the seaboard of Marocco, the great yellow chrysanthemum (_C. coronarium_), with florets varying in hue from orange to pale lemon colour, is conspicuous on sea banks, with several fine species of Heron’s-bill (_Erodium_). In the sands a large purple-flowered _Malcolmia_ (_M. littorea_) and many _Leguminosæ_ already diversified the aspect of the vegetation; while robust _Umbelliferæ_, mingled with the familiar eryngo of our own shores, had as yet merely developed their showy leaves.[2] But the characteristic form which chiefly interests the stranger to this region is a grey leafless bush, with long pendulous whipcord-like branches waving in the breeze, that is common among the sandhills, and recurs elsewhere in dry exposed situations. There is something sad in the meagre and drooping aspect of the plant that brings to mind those dismal mourning trinkets, wherein a lock of hair is made to form the effigy of a weeping willow. This is the R’tam of the Moors, whence botanists have formed the name _Retama_ for a small group of brooms, containing a few nearly allied species, that are widely spread throughout the region extending from Spain to the Canary Islands. In the early spring our Tangier plant (_Retama monosperma_ of Boissier) is covered with clusters of small white odoriferous flowers. These had nearly all disappeared, and were succeeded by little hard one-seeded pods, which in some of the varieties ultimately become thick and fleshy, and are much sought after by birds. Not uncommonly the slender branches are laden with clusters of a small species of Helix that at some distance might be taken for fruit.