Description :

• Glabrous evergreen trees or shrubs (mangroves)
• Leaves opposite, ovate or elliptic, acuminate, leathery, black-dotted on lower surface; stipules lanceolate
• Flowers in axillary 1-3-flowered, pedunculate cymes; with 2 bracteoles
• Calyx 4- or 5-lobed, leathery; tube short, adnate at base to ovary; lobes oblong or ovate, ribbed on apical part of upper surface, valvate, persistent
• Petals 4(5), arising at base of fleshy disc, lanceolate with inflexed margins, entire, sometimes woolly, sometimes with stalked gland at apex; pedicels long, thick
• Stamens 4 epipetalous and 4-8 episepalous, lying in pairs in concave surface of petals and embraced by their inflexed margins; filaments short; anthers lanceolate, apiculate, many-thecous, opening by a ventral valve; pollen grains conspicuous
• Ovary half-inferior, 2-locular, with 2 pendulous ovules in each locule; style conical, slightly bifid at tip
• Fruit a leathery, ovoid, obconic, or cylindric berry, surrounded at base by persistent calyx
• Seeds 1 by abortion; embryo germinating on plant, perforating apex of fruit and falling out of it
• x = 18

Nomenclature:

• Rhizophora L.
  • Linnaeus: 443 (1753)
  • Sonder: 513 (1862)
  • Torre & Gonçalves: 82 (1978)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species ± 8, cosmopolitan on shores of tropical Africa, Asia and America
• Southern Africa : Species 1: Rhizophora mucronata Lam., KwaZulu-Natal coast to Eastern Cape (Transkei)