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The Mangroves 



bottomless swamps, they would fall a prey to the peeler's axe. 

 The Floridian depends upon a smudge of punky black mangrove 

 to rid him of mosquitoes and sandflies, the twin scourge of the 

 summer nights. The range of this tree reaches north to St. 

 Augustine and Cedar Keys. From the southern end of the 

 peninsula and the neighbouring keys it extends into the West 

 Indies, the Bahamas, and on to Brazil. 



The black mangrove is a tropical member of the verbena 

 family, well known to us in its herbaceous representatives that 

 grow in Northern gardens. The fiddlewood of lower Florida 

 {Citheraxylon villosum) is its nearest relative. The most important 

 timber tree in the family is the teak, Tedoria grandis, which 

 grows in tropical Asia and the East Indies. The catalpas in the 

 bignonia family are also close tree kin of the black mangrove. 



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