Mangroves: Trees That Make Land 



By William M. Stephens 



[With 4 plates] 



When Columbus discovered the New World he noticed a strange 

 kind of tree growing in shallow salt-water lagoons, its trunk held 

 above the surface by arching, stiltlike roots. In the Gulf of Batabano, 

 on Cuba's south coast, Columbus wrote in his ship's log that the trees 

 were "so thick a cat couldn't get ashore." 



A century later Sir Walter Raleigh, while searching for the land of 

 El Dorado, found the same kind of tree at the mouths of rivers in 

 Trinidad and Guiana and noted that the trees had "oysters upon the 

 branches." The oysters, he said, were "very salt and well tasted" and 

 were found only "upon those boughs and sprays, and not on the 

 ground. 



Tourists who visit tidal areas in the Tropics where mangrove trees 

 flourish continue to be astonished at the spectacle of oysters "growing 

 on trees." These coon oysters, which attach themselves to the prop 

 roots of the red mangrove, where they are often exposed at low tide, 

 are not generally considered a delicacy today, except, perhaps, to 

 raccoons, but they are quite edible. 



The tree described by both Columbus and Raleigh was the red 

 mangrove {RMzo'pliora mangle)^ which is found throughout the New 

 World Tropics. Closely related species grow in Indo-Pacific regions. 

 All trees of the genus Rhizophora have the distinctive prop roots, that 

 look to some observers like the legs of monstrous spiders wading in 

 shallow water. They are, according to some botanists, the only "true" 

 mangroves. Red mangroves are important land builders, pioneer 

 trees that start new islands and extend old shorelines. They are 

 always found in or near the water. Other mangroves (of which there 

 are only two in the New World : the black mangrove, Avicennia nitida, 

 and the white mangrove, Laguncularia racemosa) are usually found 

 farther inland. 



^ Reprinted by permission from Sea Frontiers (Magazine of the International Oceano- 

 graphic Foundation), vol. 8, No. 4, October 1962. 



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