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AVICENNIA OFFICINALIS, Linné. 
THE MANAWA. 
OrRDER—VERBENACEX. 
(Plate CXXX.) 
Tuis littoral tree is well known to settlers as the ‘‘mangrove”’ or ‘ white 
mangrove,”’ and is found in estuaries or muddy tidal rivers, where it presents a 
singular appearance, especially at high water, when large specimens rise above 
the water to the height of 4oft., so that boats may be easily rowed amongst 
them. At low water their naked trunks are exposed, and the mud is seen to 
be thickly studded with erect shoots from rft. to 3ft. high, given off from the 
tangled roots, and resembling very strong shoots of asparagus: the naked trunks 
of large specimens are frequently covered between tide-marks with the rock- 
oyster (Ostrea glomeraia). Although the tree can only attain its greatest 
juxuriance in deep water, specimens may be seen, little more than rft. in height, 
growing on muddy beaches where they are all but submerged during high tides. 
The white mangrove forms an evergreen shrub or small tree, usually from 
6ft. to 4oft. high: the branchlets are opposite, and clothed with short brown 
downy hairs: the leaves are opposite, and are carried on rather broad leaf-stalks, 
smooth above, but clothed with grey or brown hairs below: they are from 2in. 
to 3in. long and from tin. to r4in. in breadth, narrowed at both extremities, and 
acute or obtuse at the apex. They turn black in drying. 
The flowers are arranged in heads about 4in. or less in diameter, carried on 
foot-stalks springing from the axils of the leaves: each cluster of heads has a pair 
of small bract-like leaves at its base, and consists of three or five furrowed flower- 
stalks of unequal length, each carrying from five to eight sessile flowers, forming 
a compact head with three brown shaggy bracts at its base; each flower is 
seated between a pair of smaller bracts: all the bracts, with the calyx and upper 
part of the corolla, are thickly clothed with brown silky hairs. The calyx is 
deeply cleft into four or five sepals, and nearly equals the corolla, which is thick 
and leathery in texture, bell-shaped, with four or five spreading lobes, and carries 
four or five short stamens inserted in the upper part of its tube. The ovary is 
two- or, rarely, three-celled, clothed with long silky hairs on its upper surface, 
and with two ovules in each cell; it is crowned with two or, rarely, three short 
styles. The fruit is a large ovoid leathery capsule containing a single cell and a 
single seed: the process of germination is commenced by the protrusion of the 
rootlet while the fruit is still on the tree. 
Forster erroneously supposed this species to produce a resin, which led him 
to describe it as Avicennia resinifera. 
Its local distribution is nearly identical with that of the kauri and the rock- 
oyster. 
PROPERTIES AND USEs. 
The wood of the mangrove is white, straight in the grain, tough, and elastic, 
but very perishable. From an analysis made at the Colonial Laboratory it is 
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