At high tide you would not be able to see the cordgrass in this photo
This month our theme is “backyard nature”. One of my favorite things about shooting photos in your backyard is that you have lots of opportunists to capture weather. I live in Hampton Beach, New Hampshire, a small New England beach town. It is a small strip of land, with beach on one side and a salt marsh conservation area on the other side. This photo was taken on the salt marsh behind my house. This is a tidal area, so on high tide you could not walk out where I am in this photo. In fact, during high tide you would not even be able to see the cordgrass shown in this photo.
What is cordgrass? Cordgrass is a common type of grass that is found in salt marshes. This type of cordgrass has a hollow stem and grows to about 4.5 feet tall. It is native and commonly found along the Northeast United States coastline. This type of grass is resilient. This grass gets wind whipped, and crushed by waves. It regularly tolerates being completely submerged in seawater, as it gets covered during high tide events.
Ok that’s cool, but what has cordgrass done for me? This tough grass helps stabilize our coastline, and protect us from erosion. More than a quarter of all the people in the US live in a coastal county, so that’s a big deal. Besides protecting our shorelines from erosion, cordgrass also creates a habitat for other creatures, such as the saffron skipper. A saffron skipper is a butterfly found in North America. When this butterfly is in its larval stage, it lives in the salt marshes and exclusively eats cordgrass.
Did you know? Cordgrass can be found from Canada to Argentina!
Cordgrass helps protect the coastline from erosion
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