Freshwater Marsh

A freshwater marsh is a non-tidal wetland dominated by herbaceous plants rather than trees or woody vegetation, and is North America's most common and most diverse type of marsh. It holds standing or slowly moving fresh water with seasonal fluctuations in water level, supporting grasses, rushes, sedges, cattails and similar plants whose aerenchyma, air channels running from leaf to root, let them survive in waterlogged soil. North American examples include wet meadows in lake basins and depressions, seasonally flooded vernal pools, the circular playa lakes of the southern high plains, and the glacially formed prairie potholes of the north, and these marshes filter water, absorb floods and provide breeding habitat for waterfowl and amphibians.