The Lush and the Harsh of Life on the Marsh

My husband Marty is my go-to person for virtually everything. Ever since we moved to this little house on the salt marsh, we have both been studying its life and its ways. He more so than I. I asked him to describe what is going on out there right now, as it is quite remarkable - the changes are coming quickly and dramatically as summer rolls into fall, and I thought you would enjoy this primer on what's going on out there.

This is my brief response to your request that I write down some of what I was saying about the changes in the marsh. Here are seven fun facts about our salt marsh:

1. This is the crucial time of year for the marsh. The marsh is literally created by the marsh grasses, mostly two type of spartina, and at this time of year, they're reproducing. That's the gold color you've been seeing.

2. The persistent and salt-tolerant spartina roots trap the mud as the tide flows in and out. This slows the water down so the muck stays and forms a marsh instead of a bay. The grasses literally create the marsh.

3. The grasses are just starting their die-back. This is also very important. The center of the food web here is not so much the lovely spartina of the summer as much as the dead spartina of the winter. This surface waste is eaten by detritavores - creatures that feed on dead things. Around here the detritavores are mostly tiny snails, also some small, specialized fish. All the more visible creatures like the dabbling ducks slurp up those protein-rich snails, while the sly herons hunt the fish.

4. The marsh here has two main kinds of spartina. The lovely wavy grass right in front of our house, that likes to be inundated twice a month at the highest tides, is called s. patens. The more prevalent grass that's kind of punk, all spiky, is s. alterniflora. It prefers a daily tidal wetting. In our marsh, spartina is very valuable and is protected. On the west coast it's considered a pest and authorities spent a lot of money killing it.

5. Spartina is superbly well suited to living here. Each root has a tiny tube, a snorkel, that it can use to breathe when the plant is under water. The plants are veritable chemical factories, absorbing toxic salts and metals and excreting them - they are prolific and efficient water cleaners.

6. Through a process that is a kind of slow-motion combustion, the detritus and mud turn to peat. You could dig the marsh up, dry it, and burn it - maybe to distill a little scotch......

7. In the previous few centuries, people right here and elsewhere cut the marsh hay - spartina - and used it for animal food. The basis for agriculture from the 1600s onwards around here was spartina. As recently as the start of the 21st century, people here cut the spartina like it was a lawn. Nowadays, the powers that be would frown on that practice, and neighbors would laugh.