It grows out into the water at the seaward edge of a salt marsh, and accumulates sediment and enables other habitat-engineering species, such as mussels, to settle.

S. alterniflorus grows in tallest forms at the outermost edge of a given marsh, displaying shorter morphologies up onto the landward side of the Sporobolus belt.

S. alterniflorus is native to the Atlantic coast of the Americas from Newfoundland, Canada, south to northern Argentina, where it forms a dominant part of brackish coastal saltmarshes.

It can grow on a wider range of sediments than other species of the genus Sporobolus, and can survive inundation in salt water for longer periods of time.

[8] In California, four species of exotic Sporobolus (S. alterniflorus, S. densiflora, S. patens, and S. anglicus) have been introduced to the San Francisco Bay region.

[9] It was introduced in 1973 by the Army Corps of Engineers in an attempt to reclaim marshland, and was spread and replanted around the bay in further restoration projects.

Hand pulling is ineffective because even small rhizome fragments that inevitably break off and get left in the soil are capable of sending up new shoots.

In Willapa Bay, leafhopper bugs (Prokelisia marginata) were employed to kill the plants, which threaten the oyster industry there, but this method did not contain the invasion.

Surveys by air, land, and sea are conducted in infested and threatened areas near San Francisco to determine the spread of Sporobolus species.