The marsh is dotted with tree islands of coastal forest, commonly called hammocks. These hammocks have little tolerance for salt and grow only where the elevation is high enough to prevent flooding during high tides. They also form a substrate used by other plant and animal species.
Oysters prefer a low-energy tidal setting with regular freshwater flow from surface runoff.
Only occasional storm-driven high tides flood the salt barren. Salts accumulate here because there is not enough flushing to wash the salts away. Only the most salt-tolerant plants such as pickleweed and glassworts grow in a salt barren.