The intertidal and subtidal wetlands of vascular vegetation on the Texas coast are among the most diverse flora of any coastal state in the United States. Marsh, mangrove, and seagrass distributional patterns reflect the unique latitudinal gradient in rainfall from the wet Sabine-Neches estuary to the arid Lower Laguna Madre, in which precipitation decreases by over 50% over Texas’ 5400 km coastline. The estuarine vegetation changes predictably in response to increasing salinity, from brackish emergent marsh systems in the north, to mixed mangrove-marsh assemblages on the central coast, to hypersaline systems dominated by submerged seagrasses and wind-tidal flats in the south. These foundation species are largely responsible for the enormous secondary productivity of the Texas coastal system as reflected in strong fisheries that include many estuarine dependent species, from oysters to redfish. These vegetated habitats are also critical to the amazing resilience of the Texas coastal zone to storms and other natural disturbances. In this chapter, we describe vegetative spatial distributions in relation to freshwater inflow and the role of nutrients, light, and soils on plant productivity and carbon sequestration. Special emphasis is placed on the value of wetlands as long-term integrators of regional climate, sea level rise, nutrient loading, and salinity.