Inland Salt Marshes
Inland salt marshes are extraordinarily rare communities known in Virginia only from a small mountain valley near Saltville in Smyth County. Similar but somewhat compositionally different communities are known from inland salt flats in New York and Michigan. The unique habitat at Saltville, consisting of several basin wetlands flooded by groundwater discharging through Mississippian-aged salt deposits, has been greatly reduced by industrial salt mining, hydrologic alterations, and grazing. However, small remnant marshes remain, supporting a very rare type of emergent vegetation composed largely of several remarkable halophytes disjunct to the Ridge and Valley from the Atlantic Coastal Plain estuaries. The salinity of water in these marshes varies over time from entirely fresh to polyhaline. Dominants are saltmarsh bulrush (Bolboschoenus robustus), black-grass rush (Juncus gerardii) and formerly, on a few small exposed mud flats, dwarf spikerush (Eleocharis parvula). Also present are spear orach (Atriplex patula), smooth orach (Atriplex glabriuscula), jointed glasswort (Salicornia virginica), foxtail barley (Hordeum jubatum ssp. jubatum), common cattail (Typha latifolia), common threesquare (Schoenoplectus pungens var. pungens), orange jewelweed (Impatiens capensis), swamp rose-mallow (Hibiscus moscheutos), and several non-native weeds. It appears likely that the community type represented at Saltville is endemic to this site, which is currently used as a local town park.
Reference: Ogle (1981).Click here for more photos of this ecological community group.
© DCR-DNH, Gary P. Fleming.