salt thatch n NEng, Long Is. NY Cf creek thatch n
A cordgrass n (here: Spartina alterniflora).
1757 Greene Greenes of RI 117, I also give unto my said son James Greene . . all my salt thatch bed and upland that lies Southward of line hereafter mentioned. 1763 Providence Gaz. & Country Jrl. (RI) 24 Dec [4]/1, [Advt:] Also, to be sold, a small Thatch Bed, which yields yearly a Ton and an Half of Salt Thatch. 1830 Portsmouth Jrl. & Rockingham Gaz. (NH) 27 Feb [3]/5, [Advt:] A piece of Salt Thatch in Rye, will be included in the lease. 1868 NY Times (NY) 15 Aug 8/3 RI, They . . have had the range of a large lot, with abundance of fresh and salt water, together with pasture grass and salt thatch. 1910 Brooklyn Daily Eagle (NY) 26 Sept 5/6 Long Is. NY, The Mayor’s farmer has been cutting salt thatch for use as bedding for the stock and storing it, and the opinion is that the fire started from spontaneous combustion. 1911 Assoc. Amer. Geogrs. Annals 1.142 NEng, From the half tide level, to nearly mean high tide, only a single species occurs, the salt thatch mentioned above [=Spartina alterniflora]. 1922 Motor Boat 10 Feb 16/1 swCT, The few weeks in spring that are given up to outfitting . . are all too fleeting, and before one knows it the salt thatch is over waist high. 1934 Coffin Lost Paradise 49 swME (as of c1905), The rest [of the marsh] beyond the beaver dams on both sides of the creek was salt thatch. The thatch had not only to be cut, but it had to be carried out of the tide’s way green. 1960 U.S. Geol. Surv. Bulletin 1071.378 sRI, Where peat occurs, it is composed largely of the distinctive grasses of the coastal salt marshes, particularly the salt grass Spartina patens and the common salt thatch Spartina stricta.