This is a salt-tolerant plant group that grows in soil or waters of high salinity, coming into contact with saline water through its roots or by salt spray, such as in saline semi-deserts, mangrove swamps, marshes and sloughs and seashores.

Halophytes growing in saline soils or near the delta of a river, show:

• Vivipary which is in-situ seed germination. The seeds, while remaining attached in the mother plant, germinate and then shaded off.
• Pneumatophores or the breathing roots are for gaseous exchange.