In the coming decades, crop production will need to increase to meet the demands of a burgeoning population. Moreover, climate change-induced drought is predicted to increase irrigation, and in turn, soil salinity. About 20% of irrigated land worldwide is considered saline without any efficient means of removing salt from the soil. Saline soils significantly inhibit plant growth, and thus salt tolerant crops are needed to continue food production in the future. Most salt tolerance research has focused on salt-sensitive glycophytes, including most crop species we rely on. Research on tolerance mechanisms in halophytes, plant species that thrive in salt, is currently limited. We have chosen seashore paspalum (Paspalum vaginatum), a halophytic grass closely related to agronomically vital crops in the Panicoideae, to better under mechanisms of salt tolerance in halophytes. Seashore paspalum is used as a popular turfgrass due to its ability to be irrigated with brackish water, stemming from its high salt tolerance. Though it has been intensely studied, it has only been done so as a turf. We have grown seashore paspalum in a novel way, without trimming plants, to gain a more accurate understanding of how it copes with elevated salinity. This has been done in comparison with P. distichum, a glycophytic sister species that inhabits mostly freshwater habitats. We show that Paspalum is tolerant of salt shock conditions and show that genotypes that are slow-growing under low salt lose less relative biomass under high salt. Furthermore, we provide evidence for a novel mechanism of sodium sequestration in seashore paspalum, whereby sodium is sequestered in leaf papillae, the first known specialized organ for sodium sequestration in the Panicoideae. An RNA-seq analysis further illustrates differences between seashore paspalum accession HI10 and P. distichum accession Spence, with HI10 being poised to respond to salt stress, while many mechanisms are salt induced in Spence. Collectively, our results lay the groundwork for investigating seashore paspalum as a model halophytic system.