Coastal salt marshes are found scattered along the California coast where freshwater drainages meet the sea, forming estuaries, and in non-tidal wetlands where high salinities persist due to historic tidal influence. Plants are adapted to soils with high salt concentrations and low oxygen levels, and to periodic flooding and drying from fluctuating tides. Many have succulent leaves and mechanisms for expelling excess salts, as well as the ability to move oxygen to the roots in heavy, anoxic soils. Salt marshes are unique habitats that provide valuable nurseries for many marine fishes, and are vital for both migratory and resident birds, such as the endangered Belding’s savannah sparrow and the light-footed Ridgeway’s rail. More than 90% of California’s salt marsh habitat has been destroyed, and it is threatened today by pollution, invasive species, and sea level rise. Their high concentrations of endangered species, valuable ecosystem functions, and degraded conditions makes them excellent candidates for restoration work.
California saltbush
| Extriplex californica | Chenopodicaceae (goosefoot family) |
Low-lying, prostrate or mound-forming perennial, to 30 cm (12 in), with silvery, blue-green leaves. Found almost exclusively along the coast of California and the Channel Islands near bluffs, salt marshes, and other low-lying places with saline soils. Its pastel-colored herbage is fed on by coots, rabbits, and salt marsh rodents. The plant seems to be attractive to (and possibly a larval host) for the smallest butterfly in the world, the Western pygmy blue.
Saltgrass
| Distichlis spicata | Chumash - saha (*) |
| Poaceae (grass family) |
Rhizomatous, perennial grass, 10-50 cm (4-20 in). Common around salt marshes, coastal bluffs and inland, occurring in both wetlands and uplands, as well as in saline and non-saline soils. It survives extremely salty conditions by excreting excess salt from the leaves, where it often accumulates visibly. Native California Indians both burned and threshed the plant to acquire salt from it.
The leaves and stems can be difficult to distinguish from Bermuda grass, Cynodon dactylon, but they are easily distinguished by their flowers. Distichlis spicata is the larval host plant for the wandering skipper butterfly. Distichlis littoralis, shoregrass, also occurs around salt marshes in the area and has shorter leaves and difficult to see, diminutive flowers.
(*) Note: the Chumash name is Ventureño, no Barbareño name known
Alkali heath
| Frankenia salina | Frankeniaceae (frankenia family) |
Bushy, mat or mound-forming perennial subshrub, to 45 cm (18 in), with small, hairy leaves and pinkish to magenta flowers. Often forming large, spreading mats. Found in and around salt marshes and alkali flats. A monotypic (one species) taxon like California bay and yerba mansa, it is the only member of this plant family native to California. It is a nectar plant for the rare wandering skipper butterfly, which is confined to salt marshes.
Fleshy jaumea, jaumea
| Jaumea carnosa | Asteraceae (sunflower family) |
Succulent, mat-forming perennial, to 0.3 m (1 ft), with bluish-green leaves and yellow flowers that bloom from May to July, sometimes later. Both rhizomatous (forming underground, spreading stems called rhizomes) and stoloniferous (stems that run on the surface of the ground and root at the nodes, called stolons), it colonizes mid to upper salt marsh elevations.
Pickleweed
| Salicornia pacifica | Chenopodiaceae (goosefoot family) |
Succulent, mat-forming perennial, 20-70 cm (8-28 in). Pickleweed is usually the most dominant plant species in coastal salt marshes. It provides important habitat for many species and is a larval food source for the Western pygmy blue butterfly. It is edible, though very salty, resembling pickles both in appearance and flavor. A similar, less abundant species, Parish’s glasswort, Arthrocnemum subterminale, is dark green, clump forming, and occurs at higher elevations at the edges of salt marshes on campus.
Saltmarsh dodder
| Cuscuta salina | Convolvulaceae (morning glory family) |
Orange, leafless, parasitic plant with small white flowers that produces no chlorophyll. The plant derives all water and nutrition from host plants such as jaumea, pickleweed, and alkali heath through its haustorium which connect the xylem and phloem of the two plants through the stem. Cuscuta pacifica also occurs in the area’s salt marshes, and about 30 species in the genus occur in California, 25 of which are native.
Some, like the chaparral dodder, Cuscuta californica, are upland plants. Unlike parasitic plants that receive only some nutrition from host plants and produce some chlorophyll, called hemiparasites, species in the genus Cuscuta are wholly parasitic.