A vocabulary of landscape — a landscape of words
1343 entries
shingle
Shingle is a beach of loose water-worn pebbles rather than sand, sorted by wave action so that the largest stones sit at the top of the beach where only the biggest waves reach. It drains instantly, moves underfoot, and stores almost no fresh water, which makes it one of the harder places for a plant to live and one of the more distinctive habitats in Europe.
Etymology
The word appears in English in the sixteenth century and its origin is not settled, though a Norse source meaning something like small stones is generally suggested. It is unrelated to the roofing shingle, which came from Latin by way of a word for a wooden tile.
Notes
A shingle structure grows by longshore drift and can extend for miles as a spit or a ness. Dungeness in Kent is one of the largest in the world, a triangle of stone ridges that records every stage of its own growth. The plants that live on it — sea kale, sea pea, yellow horned poppy — have deep taproots and waxy leaves and are found nowhere else.