200 CONFESSIONS OF A BEACHCOMBER 



adventitious roots, which on reaching the mud grasp it 

 with strong finger-like rootlets. These arching roots, too, 

 send out from their arches other roots that arch, and the 

 arches of these similarly repeat themselves, and so on, 

 until the tree is underpinned and supported and stayed by 

 an elaborate and complicated system, which while offering 

 no resistance to the sweep of the seas, upholds the tree as no 

 solid trunk or stem could. Then from the plan of arches 

 spring offshoots, in time to become trees as great as the 

 parent. Aerial roots start a downward career from the 

 overhanging branches, anchoring themselves in the mud. 

 Some young seedling drops and the pointed end sticks 

 deep in the mud, and grows forthwith, to possess arching 

 and aerial roots of its own, and to make confusion worse 

 confounded. The identity of the original founder of the 

 grove is lost in the bewildering labyrinth of its own arches, 

 offshoots, and aerial roots, and of independent trees to 

 which it has given the mystery of life. One floating radicle 

 with its pent-up energy, having after weeks of drifting and 

 swaying this way and that to the slightest current and 

 ripple, grapples Mother Earth and makes a law to the 

 ocean. Among the interlacing roots seaweed, sodden 

 driftwood and leaves lodge, sand collects, and as the level 

 of the floor of the ocean is raised the sea retires, contributing 

 by the flotsam and jetsam of each spring-tide to its own 

 inevitable conquest. 



Not to one plant alone is the victory to be ascribed. 

 As in the army there are various and distinct branches of 

 service, so in this ancient and incessant strife between land 

 and water, the vegetable invaders are classified and have 

 their appointed place and duties. Neither are all the 

 constituents of a mangrove swamp mangroves. In the 

 first rank will be found the hardiest and most highly 

 specialised — Rhizophora murcronata, next, Bruguiera gym- 

 norrhiza (a plant of slightly more lowly growth but prolific 

 of arching and aerial roots) ; Bruguiera Rheedi (red or 

 orange mangrove.) Some of the roots of the latter spread 

 over the surface and have vertical kinks, The roots and 



