Mangrove
2 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Mangrove. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
an overhanging plant of tropical coasts, remarkable for the way it encroaches upon the sea. The weeds sprout before they fall, and are provided with roots half a foot long before they strike the muddy shore. Horizontal branches also send down aerial roots, possibly ten feet long, which take root and thicken above into trunks quite banyan-tree fashion. This process continues until a mangrove swamp is an impenetrable jungle growing far out into the sea, where it catches debris and silt and extends the coastline outward. Mangrove swamps are the refuge of fish, fowl, and beast. The mangrove abounds on tropical shores in both hemispheres. Mangrove swamps skirt Florida, occur at the mouth of the Mississippi, and are seen along the coast as far as Texas. Shellfish cling to the stems and branches. Early navigators, sailing by when the tide was out, declared they had seen oysters growing on trees. The wood serves as fuel. The stems make serviceable piles. The timber is susceptible of a beautiful polish. The bark is used in medicine and in tanning.
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
a tree inhabiting the tro parts of the world shores of the tropical known to in either hemisphere, and well account of the dense groves navigators on forms, even down into the water which it the Rhizoitself. It belongs to being Rhizophora Manphora (its name remarkable for gle), and is principally seeds germinating before generated the case in its which they were on the branches. The young radicle grows downward through the humid air, reaches the mud, in which it fixes till it then the leaves and new stem itself, and opposite end. The white unfold at the Laguncularia racemosa, and mangrove is mangrove, Avicennia tomentosa. the black in Riley
What Has Changed in the Last Century
The botany in both accounts still holds: the germinating seedling on the branch (viviparity) and the stilt roots of Rhizophora mangle are described accurately, though Collier's "Avicennia tomentosa" for the American black mangrove is now called Avicennia germinans. What has changed utterly is the value placed on the swamps. Where Aiton's in 1910 saw an "impenetrable jungle" good for fuel, piles and tanbark, mangroves are now legally protected in Florida and much of the tropics as fish nurseries, storm buffers and exceptionally dense stores of "blue carbon" — protection prompted by the loss of a large share of the world's mangrove area to shrimp ponds, timber and coastal development since about 1950. The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, where sheltered coasts fared visibly better, did more than any argument to make coastal mangrove restoration a mainstream policy, and warming has begun pushing Florida and Gulf mangroves north into former salt marsh.
Written for this edition, 2026.