[1][2] The plant is native to the coast of western North America from British Columbia to Baja California.

It is a halophyte, living in coastal salt marsh habitats, such as the San Francisco Bay.

Cuscuta pacifica is a slender annual vine with yellowish thread-like stems that wrap tightly around other plants.

The salt marsh dodder produces flowers with bell-shaped, white glandular corollas with five-pointed triangular lobes.

Previous treatments included this species as two varieties of a more broadly defined Cuscuta salina, but they were recently recognized to be a distinct species with clear habitat and host affinities and reproductively isolated from Cuscuta salina var.