Rhizophora mangle Linnaeus, 1753 - red mangrove in the Bahamas.

Plants are multicellular, photosynthesizing eucaryotes. Most species occupy terrestrial environments, but they also occur in freshwater and saltwater aquatic environments. The oldest known land plants in the fossil record are Ordovician to Silurian. Land plant body fossils are known in Silurian sedimentary rocks - they are small and simple plants (e.g., Cooksonia). Fossil root traces in paleosol horizons are known in the Ordovician. During the Devonian, the first trees and forests appeared. Earth's initial forestation event occurred during the Middle to Late Paleozoic. Earth's continents have been partly to mostly covered with forests ever since the Late Devonian. Occasional mass extinction events temporarily removed much of Earth's plant ecosystems - this occurred at the Permian-Triassic boundary (251 million years ago) and the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary (65 million years ago).

The most conspicuous group of living plants is the angiosperms, the flowering plants. They first unambiguously appeared in the fossil record during the Cretaceous. They quickly dominated Earth's terrestrial ecosystems, and have dominated ever since. This domination was due to the evolutionary success of flowers, which are structures that greatly aid angiosperm reproduction.

The red mangrove principally lives in sheltered estuaries with its roots in and often submerged by marine water. Most angiosperms cannot tolerate such saline conditions. The plant’s vascular tissues transport nutrients and water throughout the plant, as do all vascular plants. The transported water is, of course, quite salty. This salt is not needed by the organism. The red mangrove concentrates the salt into a few leaves, which turn yellow. Eventually, the yellow, salt-rich leaf detaches and falls into the water. These leaves essentially act as kidneys for the whole plant.

Classification: Plantae, Angiospermophyta, Rhizophorales, Rhizophoraceae

Locality: northern shore of North Pigeon Creek Estuary, southeastern San Salvador Island, eastern Bahamas

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