Marsh Monsters and Swampmallows

Where are the marsh monsters? There are plenty of swamp monsters in film and literature - Swamp Thing, Swamp Devil, Louisiana Swamp Monster. And why is one at greater risk in a boat of being “swamped” by a rogue wave? No one gets “marshed.”

So, what gives? Are marshes just not as scary cool as swamps? On the substantive creepiness scale, swamps such as in the Louisiana Bayou Country, register high. They are alive with impending death – skin-crawling bugs, terrestrial and semi-aquatic toothy creatures such as nutria rats and alligators, and slithering venomous snakes.

I got to musing about swamps and marshes when I was strolling down to the boat landing at Marsh Haven Landing - a small development where we own land into the marsh. The development is well-named. The haven-part suits.

Considering further the swamp, a famous one, The Great Dismal Swamp was named in 1763 when George Washington visited the coastal plains of Virginia and North Carolina and, with others, founded the Dismal Swamp Company in a failed venture intending to drain the swamp and clear it for settlement.

Recently, there continue references to “draining the swamp” of corruption in Washington, D.C., a city built on a swamp along the Potomac River. Draining the capitalist swamp has been a term used for centuries. Drained swamps can also help reduce mosquito infestations.

An essential difference between a swamp and a marsh is that a swamp is more forest-like and can have deeper standing water. Trees such as cypress, tupelo and pine provide a dark canopy where a greater abundance of larger creatures can exist, like rodents and larger mammals, and the occasional monster.

But the distinction gets as murky as… well, a swamp. Both marshes and swamps can be tidal, and hence infiltrated by salt water. The Everglades contains sawgrass marshes and cypress swamps, but is most accurately considered a slow-moving river. Marshes, like swamps, are wetlands within riparian areas (between water and land), and both can exist near the coast. Marshes have herbaceous plants like grasses and weeds. Swamps tend to be more composed of freshwater and are near large rivers and lakes, though marshes can also be found near lakes and streams.

Salt marshes are plentiful, making up almost four million acres of land in the U.S, primarily in the Southeast. This salt marsh ecosystem is an essential buffer and filter for coastal bays and estuaries.

In studying the details of our “marsh” property this morning, gathering that there are nearby streams, a river and the ocean providing brackish water to the vegetation, and finding a diversity of shrubs and trees thriving in a continually soggy soil, I believe we most accurately are part-swamp and part-marsh though the property unsurprisingly was not marketed that way.

I Google searched for other similar developments and found, for example: Winding Marsh, Marsh Plantation, and Marsh Point Preserve. I did not find a single housing development with “swamp” in its name. There are plenty of “swamp preserves”, however, that one can visit.

Marshes, unlike swamps, have something else to entice. The moisture-loving marshmallow plant, specifically its root, is edible and found in marshes. The plants are part of the Malvaceae family, which includes hibiscus and okra. Confectionery stores in 19^th-century France whipped the sap from the mallow root into a fluffy candy mold, hence marshmallows. Sweet! I think I found a new hobby crop for our property.