{"id":10179,"date":"2018-06-01T16:52:00","date_gmt":"2018-06-01T20:52:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ncseagrant.ncsu.edu\/coastwatch\/?page_id=10179"},"modified":"2024-08-15T14:19:57","modified_gmt":"2024-08-15T18:19:57","slug":"thriving-in-sun-salt-and-sand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ncseagrant.ncsu.edu\/coastwatch\/thriving-in-sun-salt-and-sand\/","title":{"rendered":"Thriving in Sun, Salt and Sand"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n\n\n

Excerpts from <\/em>Seacoast Plants of the Carolinas: A New Guide for Plant Identification and Use in the Coastal Landscape<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Copyright \u00a9 2018 by North Carolina State University. Used by permission of the University of North Carolina Press. www.uncpress.org<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n

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The coast of the Carolinas stretches from the unincorporated community of Carova Beach, N.C., located north of the Outer Banks, to Daufuskie Island, S.C., near the mouth of the Savannah River. Distinctive in many ways, the Carolinas\u2019 coastal environment differs from the roller coaster-like Piedmont and the imposing Appalachian Mountains. A complex interplay of features gives the coast its identity. There are salty ocean waters and muddy estuaries, nutrient-poor and highly mobile sandy substrates, saltsheared forests and expansive coastal grasslands, occasional nor\u2019easters and punishing hurricanes. These elements, combined with the dynamic wave and tide actions, merge in time and space to create a unique complex of conditions to which only a limited number of plants and animals have adapted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The uncommonly attractive yet alien-appearing plant and animal communities created by the intersection of land, sea, and air draw many people to this coastal setting. Millions of people visit this region for action- or leisure-filled vacations each year; hundreds of thousands call the area home, and tens of thousands find fulfilling work there, ranging from commercial fishing to tourist-oriented service positions. This is all facilitated by \u2014 or because of \u2014 the existence of coastal communities and their natural surroundings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While the Carolinas coast presents a somewhat varying geologic history and pattern of human land use, many environmental factors interact to create the distinctive setting that we sense and recognize as \u201cthe coast.\u201d These include water (primarily salt water), sand, sun, wind, and storm activity. Here we find unique assemblages of plant and animal communities, including the beaches, dunes, forests, and wetlands. It is in these communities that we discover scores of plants, each exceptionally well adapted to the environment and coexisting with other plants and animals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Carolinas coastline varies from the long, narrow barrier islands of the Outer Banks anchored by Cape Hatteras to the high, wide iconic Sea Islands such as Kiawah and Hilton Head islands. Extensive dunes, maritime grasslands, and maritime shrub thickets dominate mile after mile of shoreline along the Outer Banks. In contrast, the topographically diverse and vegetationally complex islands of the southern North Carolina and the South Carolina coasts exhibit a preponderance of salt-aerosol-sheared arborescent vegetation, often with a narrow strip of grassy dunes along the seaward edge. Brackish marshes and salt marshes sharply define the edges of the upland communities along the estuarine shorelines of the Carolinas. Freshwater swamps, marshes, and ponds are embedded within the dunes and maritime forests.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Compared to the multifaceted and diverse dunes, grasslands, and forests, the marshes appear superficially similar. However, on closer inspection, we see that they range from structurally and vegetationally complex freshwater plant communities found in Currituck Sound to seemingly endless, monotonous expanses of estuarine marshes where but a single plant species dominates thousands of acres of intertidal environments in Port Royal and St. Helena sounds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n