In February of 2022 I visited Hugh Taylor Birch State Park that is right along Ft Lauderdale Beach Blvd right along the ocean and a canal is on the west side of the park. I happily met one of the park rangers who told me that the park was once infested and dominated with the very invasive Horsetail Australian-Pine (Casuaria equisetifolia). The park was restored to its native state with native plants. That included the Red Mangrove of which they are proud to have brought back. He said there were some White Mangroves also. Both plants are so important to protect coasts from erosion. The Red Mangrove has simple, opposite , ovate to elliptical, leathery leaves that are 3 to 7 inches long by 1 to 2 inches wide. Flowers are pale yellow about 1 inch wide and in clusters. The fruit is a conical, rusty brown about 1 inch long and having a short apical tube through which the dart-like radicle of the developing embryo protrudes becoming 6 to 12 inches long. Bark is gray to gray-brown, thick, scaly and furrowed. In Florida the species normally is a tall shrub getting about 20 feet high, but in the American tropics it can get to 80 feet high with trunks to 2 feet in diameter. It produces the stilt-like network of aerial roots like about all of the other 60 species of mangroves in the Mangrove Family.

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