California coastal salt marsh facts for kids
California's coastal salt marshes are special wet areas found along the Pacific Coast. You can find them from Humboldt Bay to San Diego. These marshes are like natural sponges, located in bays, harbors, and other protected spots. They get flooded regularly by ocean tides.
Amazing Salt Marsh Plants
The plants living in these marshes are super tough! They are called halophytes. This means they are experts at growing in salty water and soil. The soil here often has very little oxygen, which makes it even harder for most plants to survive. Because of these tough conditions, you won't find a huge variety of plant species here.
Here are some common plants you might see:
- Salt grass (Distichlis spicata)
- Franconia (Frankenia salina)
- Pickleweed and glasswort (Salicornia species)
- Cordgrass (Spartina foliosa)
- Seep weed (Suaeda californica)
These plants grow in different zones, like bands, depending on how much flooding they can handle. Cordgrass is the champion of water tolerance. It has hollow stems, which act like snorkels, letting oxygen reach its roots even when it's underwater! Further away from the water, where the highest tides reach, you'll mostly find pickleweeds and glassworts.
Did you know? The salt-marsh bird’s-beak (Cordylanthus maritimus) is a very rare and endangered plant that calls this habitat home.
Animals of the Marsh
Not many land animals live directly in the coastal salt marsh. But some special ones do! One endangered mammal is the salt marsh harvest mouse (Reithrodontomys raviventris). It lives in the San Francisco Bay area.
Birds also find a home here. Only a few types of birds live in these marshes all the time. Four of these bird species are considered rare or endangered, making the salt marsh a very important place for their survival.
