Spartina anglica is a species of cordgrass

Cordgrass

Spartina, commonly known as cordgrass or cord-grass, is a genus of 14 species of grasses in the family Poaceae. They are native to the coasts of the Atlantic Ocean in western and southern Europe, northwest and southern Africa, the Americas and the southern Atlantic Ocean islands; one or two species...

 that originated in southern England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 in about 1870. It is an allotetraploid species derived from the hybrid Spartina × townsendii, which arose when the European native cordgrass Spartina maritima

Spartina maritima

Spartina maritima is a species of cordgrass native to the coasts of western and southern Europe and western Africa, from the Netherlands west across southern England to southern Ireland, and south along the Atlantic coast to Morocco and also on the Mediterranean Sea coasts...

(Small Cordgrass) hybridised with the introduced American Spartina alterniflora

Spartina alterniflora

Spartina alterniflora is a perennial deciduous grass which is found in intertidal wetlands, especially estuarine salt marshes. It grows 1-1.5 m tall, and has smooth, hollow stems which bear leaves up to 20-60 cm long and 1.5 cm wide at their base, which are sharply tapered and bend down...

(Smooth Cordgrass).

It is a herbaceous

Herbaceous

A herbaceous plant is a plant that has leaves and stems that die down at the end of the growing season to the soil level. They have no persistent woody stem above ground...

 perennial plant

Perennial plant

A perennial plant or simply perennial is a plant that lives for more than two years. The term is often used to differentiate a plant from shorter lived annuals and biennials. The term is sometimes misused by commercial gardeners or horticulturalists to describe only herbaceous perennials...

 growing 0.4-1.3 m tall, yellowish green in spring and summer, and turning light brown in autumn and winter. The leaves

Leaf

A leaf is an organ of a vascular plant, as defined in botanical terms, and in particular in plant morphology. Foliage is a mass noun that refers to leaves as a feature of plants....

 are 20-60 cm long, and 1.5 cm broad at the base, tapering to a point. It produces flower

Flower

A flower, sometimes known as a bloom or blossom, is the reproductive structure found in flowering plants . The biological function of a flower is to effect reproduction, usually by providing a mechanism for the union of sperm with eggs...

s and seed

Seed

A seed is a small embryonic plant enclosed in a covering called the seed coat, usually with some stored food. It is the product of the ripened ovule of gymnosperm and angiosperm plants which occurs after fertilization and some growth within the mother plant...

s on only one side of the stalk. The flowers are a yellowish-green, turning brown by the winter.

Invasive problems

Spartina anglica was at first seen as a valuable new species for coastal erosion

Erosion

Erosion is when materials are removed from the surface and changed into something else. It only works by hydraulic actions and transport of solids in the natural environment, and leads to the deposition of these materials elsewhere...

 control, its dense root systems binding coastal mud and the stems increasing silt deposition, thereby assisting in land reclamation from the sea. As a result, it was widely planted at coastal sites throughout the British Isles

British Isles

The British Isles are a group of islands off the northwest coast of continental Europe that include the islands of Great Britain and Ireland and over six thousand smaller isles. There are two sovereign states located on the islands: the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and...

, and has colonised large areas of tidal mudflats, becoming an invasive species

Invasive species

"Invasive species", or invasive exotics, is a nomenclature term and categorization phrase used for flora and fauna, and for specific restoration-preservation processes in native habitats, with several definitions....

. New colonies may take some time to become established, but once they do, vegetative spread by rhizome

Rhizome

In botany and dendrology, a rhizome is a characteristically horizontal stem of a plant that is usually found underground, often sending out roots and shoots from its nodes...

s is rapid, smothering natural ecosystems and preventing bird

Bird

Birds are feathered, winged, bipedal, endothermic , egg-laying, vertebrate animals. Around 10,000 living species and 188 families makes them the most speciose class of tetrapod vertebrates. They inhabit ecosystems across the globe, from the Arctic to the Antarctic. Extant birds range in size from...

s like waders

Scolopacidae

The sandpipers are a large family, Scolopacidae, of waders or shorebirds. They include many species called sandpipers, as well as those called by names such as curlew and snipe. The majority of these species eat small invertebrates picked out of the mud or soil...

 from feeding. In some areas however, a natural dieback of unknown cause has reversed the spread, and artificial control is no longer necessary where this dieback has occurred.

It has also been introduced to Asia

Asia

Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.7% of the Earth's total surface area and with approximately 3.879 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population...

, Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

, New Zealand

New Zealand

New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...

 and North America

North America

North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...

, where it has proved to be a serious invasive species causing extensive damage to natural saltmarsh ecosystems in all areas.