Originally widespread, it has suffered severely from competition with introduced marram grass and animal grazing and now has only a patchy distribution.
It is composed mainly of bare sand within a metre of high water mark, with some patches of marram grass, and is subject to inundation by seawater during winter storms.
In a psammosere, the organisms closest to the sea will be pioneer species: salt-tolerant species such as littoral algae and glasswort with marram grass stabilising the dunes.