Thursday 15 December 2011

Indian Mangrove

                 FLOWERS TO INDIA
              Indian Mangrove 
Common name: Indian Mangrove, White Mangrove • Hindi: Bina • Marathi:  Tivar • Tamil: Madaipattai • Malayalam: Orei, Uri • Telugu: Madda, Nallamada • Kannada: Uppati • Bengali:  Bina • Konkani: Upati • Sanskrit: Sagarodurga
Botanical name: Avicennia officinalis    Family: Acanthaceae (Ruellia family)


Indian Mangrove is an evergreen tree, sometimes to 25 m, trunk to 1 m in diameter. Numerous upright air-filled roots rise above soil from long shallow, horizontal roots. Bark brownish-gray, thin, becoming rough and blackish, or outer bark yellowish-green and inner bark whitish. oppositely arranged obovate or broadly oblong leaves are 4–12 cm long, 2–6 cm wide, rounded at tip, acute or rounded at base, thick, leathery, edges slightly rolled under. The upper leaf surface is shiny green and hairless, underneath with fine gray-green hairs and resin dots. Cymes headlike in panicles, upright near ends of twigs, to 15 cm long and wide. Flowers many 2–12 together, stalkless, 7–10 mm long, 12–15 mm across. Flowers are bell-shaped, tubular, yellow or yellow-brown, turning orange, with 4 unequal spreading petals, stamens 4, inserted in notches of corolla tube. Ovary is conical, hairy, imperfectly 4-celled with 4 ovules. Capsule broadly ovoid, flattened, 2.5 cm long. Seed 1, large, flattened, without seed coat, germinating in water. 

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