Sand itself is made up of mostly inorganic materials: tiny grains of rock and some shell material. Plants need both nutrients and moisture to survive. So when sand is first blown and trapped by something on the beach to stop it, unless there are some plants to provide structure, it might just keep blowing again. And the salty, sandy environment can seem pretty inhospitable to a growing plant. We looked at the earliest colonizer, sea rocket, in terms of the role it plays in providing structure for growing plants in beach succession. But seaside panicum does more than just create a dune building structure: it actually changes the composition of the sand by establishing mycorrhizal fungi, which creates a more hospitable environment with subsequent plants that grow in the dunes.