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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
mangrove
noun
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ NOUN
forest
▪ The mangrove forest in the region has already been reduced by half.
▪ Chokoria Sunderban, an 18,000-hectare mangrove forest in Cox's Bazar, has been totally destroyed.
▪ There are the giant mangrove forests at the mouth of the Ganges, where a few Bengal tigers still flourish.
▪ Specialized intertidal communities of enormous significance are the mangrove forests of the tropics.
swamp
▪ The region's wetlands, mangrove swamps and coral reefs are also seen as under threat.
▪ At one extreme are pure, natural ecosystems like an alpine meadow or a mangrove swamp.
▪ Here it had a devastating effect on seagrass beds and mangrove swamps.
▪ The hamlet was a small and simple place, with a mangrove swamp at its western end.
▪ Its mangrove swamps are rapidly being wiped out by pollution from the satellite towns that are springing up along the shore.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ At one extreme are pure, natural ecosystems like an alpine meadow or a mangrove swamp.
▪ Behind the mangroves lay low scrub, lagoons, and then narrow flats planted with sugar cane.
▪ Navigation here means island-hopping, sheltering from any sudden storms, and not losing sight of the shore, lined with mangroves.
▪ The mangrove forest in the region has already been reduced by half.
▪ The outlook for this once beautiful natural coast, its mangroves and marine life looks bleak.
▪ There are the giant mangrove forests at the mouth of the Ganges, where a few Bengal tigers still flourish.
▪ When the tide goes out it leaves mud that the mangroves are trying to colonise.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Mangrove

Mangrove \Man"grove\, n. [Malay manggi-manggi.]

  1. (Bot.) The name of one or two trees of the genus Rhizophora ( Rhizophora Mangle, and Rhizophora mucronata, the last doubtfully distinct) inhabiting muddy shores of tropical regions, where they spread by emitting a["e]rial roots, which fasten in the saline mire and eventually become new stems. The seeds also send down a strong root while yet attached to the parent plant.

    Note: The fruit has a ruddy brown shell, and a delicate white pulp which is sweet and eatable. The bark is astringent, and is used for tanning leather. The black and the white mangrove ( Avicennia nitida and Avicennia tomentosa) have much the same habit.

  2. (Zo["o]l.) The mango fish.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
mangrove

1610s, mangrow, probably from Spanish mangle, mangue (1530s), which is perhaps from Carib or Arawakan. Modern spelling in English (1690s) is from influence of grove. A Malay origin also has been proposed, but it is difficult to explain how it came to be used for an American plant.

Wiktionary
mangrove

n. 1 Any of various tropical evergreen trees or shrubs that grow in shallow coastal water. 2 A habitat with such plants; mangrove forest; mangrove swamp. 3 Plants of the Rhizophoraceae family. 4 Trees of the genus ''Rhizophora''.

WordNet
mangrove

n. a tropical tree or shrub bearing fruit that germinates while still on the tree and having numerous prop roots that eventually form an impenetrable mass and are important in land building [syn: Rhizophora mangle]

Wikipedia
Mangrove

Mangroves are shrubs or small trees that grow in coastal saline or brackish water. The term is also used for tropical coastal vegetation consisting of such species. Mangroves occur worldwide in the tropics and subtropics, mainly between latitudes ° N and ° S. In the year 2000, the area of mangroves was 53,190 square miles (137,760 km²), spanning 118 countries and territories.

Mangroves are salt tolerant trees, also called halophytes, and are adapted to life in harsh coastal conditions. They contain a complex salt filtration system and complex root system to cope with salt water immersion and wave action. They are adapted to the low oxygen (anoxic) conditions of waterlogged mud.

The word is used in at least three senses: (1) most broadly to refer to the habitat and entire plant assemblage or mangal, for which the terms mangrove forest biome, mangrove swamp and mangrove forest are also used, (2) to refer to all trees and large shrubs in the mangrove swamp, and (3) narrowly to refer to the mangrove family of plants, the Rhizophoraceae, or even more specifically just to mangrove trees of the genus Rhizophora.

The mangrove biome, or mangal, is a distinct saline woodland or shrubland habitat characterized by depositional coastal environments, where fine sediments (often with high organic content) collect in areas protected from high-energy wave action. The saline conditions tolerated by various mangrove species range from brackish water, through pure seawater (3 to 4 %), to water concentrated by evaporation to over twice the salinity of ocean seawater (up to 9 %).

Usage examples of "mangrove".

There was usually about a foot of space between the lowermost branches and the mangrove swamp mud.

Horst men stopped shooting and throwing hand grenades into the mangrove creek.

Horst men seized Ham Brooks and drawly old Tex Haven, flung them into the dinghies, and rowed back down the mangrove creek.

Enough of a breeze was blowing to rasp mangrove boughs together occasionally, a sound somewhat as if skeletons were being moved about.

Monk slipped off a mangrove stem, landed on his head in mud which was semiliquld and about three feet deep.

From there the pewter water spreads away to the black walls of mangrove on all sides.

Little Thelma runs to the crumpled bucket of black mangrove charcoal damped with earth.

Picks up his spyglass and looks straight into the mangrove like he sees something in there besides mangrove, then keeps right on a-coming like he never heard me.

This rainy and mosquito-ridden labyrinth of mangrove islands and dark tidal rivers was all but uninhabited, despite the marvelous abundance of its fish and game.

Me and the niggers hoeing weeds was stunned by the weight of that white sky that sank so low over the mangrove in the summer, but Mister Watson was singing his old songs.

Watson looked contented, calling her children to see the dolphins that slipped across the bow, and the gray-green waves sliding ashore onto bright beaches, and the green walls of mangrove with no sign of human kind, and the towers of white clouds over the Glades.

Henry Thompson and me tied up to a mangrove and baited us some snappers while we compared our lowdown on that posse.

Bill Collier was digging garden muck for his tomatoes from a little mangrove swamp between shell ridges, just down the Caxambas trail from his Marco property, when his spade come up with some Indin war clubs, cordage, and a conch-shell dipper, and some peculiar kind of old wood carving.

Injuns and cottonmouths and giant gators, and anyways, there was nowhere to run to, nothing but mangrove and deep-water rivers, miles from anywhere.

He was still tangled when some men from Marco, stopping by on their way north from Key West, found him hooked by his trousers in the mangrove at low tide, with his nose-warmer washed up alongside him.