108 THE PLANT LIFE OF MAEYLAND 



Salt Marshes are characterized hy a simplicity of flora and by a 

 uniform physiognomy of the vegetation, while the Fresh Marshes are 

 usually extremely rich in species, and vary greatly in aspect and 

 flora in places only a few rods apart. Tn the broad marsh lands of 

 Dorchester County the fresh portions of the marsh next the Upland 

 resemble the Salt Marshes in their uniformity of physiognomy and 

 to some extent in their simplicity of flora. Along the upper waters 

 of the larger rivers the Marshes give place to Stream Swamps with 

 an outer zone of emersed aquatic plants. The Salt Marshes have 

 their greatest extent through Somerset, Dorchester and Talbot coun- 

 ties, along the Chesapeake Bay and its larger estuaries. In the 

 estuaries which end bluntly, as the Anemessex in Somerset County 

 and the Little Choptank in Dorchester County, the Salt Marsh is 

 found to their heads, while in those that are fed by fresh rivers, as 

 the Nanticoke and Choptank, the Salt Marsh merges into Fresh 

 Marsh at about the point where the estuary ceases and the stream 

 may be said to begin. Along the landward side of Sinepuxent Bay 

 and Chincoteague Bay (Assateague Sound) there is considerable 

 marsh land, which is mostly Fresh Marsh, merging back into Sandy- 

 loam Upland Swamps. 



The fresh water aquatic vegetation of the Eastern Shore is best 

 developed in the artificial mill-ponds, where species are found in 

 abundance which must have been much less common under virgin 

 conditions, when their occurrence was limited to the streams. The 

 difference in the floras of quiet and running waters are slight. 

 There are but few stagnant ponds and no peat bogs in the Eastern 

 Shore. The aquatic flora of brackish waters is poorer than that 

 of the fresh, and that of salt water poorer still. The map (Plate 

 V.) drawn to show the distribution of terrestrial halophytic plants 

 will serve equally well to show the lower limits of the brackish 

 water aquatics in the rivers and at the head of the Chesapeake. 



The vegetation of the Dunes and Strand along the ocean front 

 is characteristically devoid of trees and made up of a limited num- 

 ber of species of grasses and other herbaceous plants of xerophil- 

 ous character. At several places in Chesapeake Bay there are 

 recently formed hooks and spits in which the soil is a coarse sand 

 and the vegetation similar to that of the Ocean Dunes. 



