Nearly 5,000 plant types in the United States may occur in wetlands. These plants, known as hydrophytic vegetation, are listed in regional publications of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
You can usually determine if wetland vegetation is present by knowing a relatively few plant types that commonly occur in your area. For example, cattails, bulrushes, cordgrass, sphagnum moss, bald cypress, willows, mangroves, sedges, rushes, arrowheads, and water plantains usually occur in wetlands.
Other indicators of plants growing in wetlands include trees having shallow root systems, swollen trunks--for example the bald cypress and tupelo gum--or roots found growing from the plant stem or trunk above the soil surface. Several Corps offices have published pictorial guides of representative wetland plant types.
If you cannot determine whether the plant types in your area are those that commonly occur in wetlands, ask the local Corps district office or a local botanist for assistance.