The salt marshes generally include areas such as sandbanks having a slightly elevated border, sunken and marshy in their interior regions and intersected by erosive tidal creeks. The markedly saline terrain and the compact soil of these raised
sandbanks impede the passage of air into the lower strata: for this reason the plant life never grows very high. The vegetation in the salt marshes is more or less always the same and
depends on the degree of salinity in the soil: at the edge of the salt-marsh, in the areas largely subjected to the tides, we find Spartina (spartina marittima) a grass that often causes an elevation of the terrain by helping other species to take root there, and therefore the evolution from mud-flats as areas that emerge only periodically, at low tide.
Particularly widespread is Saltwort (salicornia veneta), a plant that is very resistant to variation in salinity. Apart from these essential plants there are other species such as Puccinellia palustris, sealavender (limonium serotinum), fruticose saltwort (arthrocnemum fruticosum), and aster (aster triolium).
In soils with less salinity near brackish water or freshwater, the vegetation is dominated cane reeds (juncus acutus, juncus maritimus).
