mangrove

noun

1. Any of various tropical and subtropical evergreen shrubs or trees chiefly of the Rhizophoraceae family that have aerial roots and grow in clumps in brackish intertidal coastal areas; (specifically) any of various trees of the genus Rhizophora, especially the red mangrove (Rhizophora mangle).

   “The channel by which we went to, and returned from Olinda, was bordered on each side by mangroves, which sprang like a miniature forest out of the greasy mud-banks. The bright green colour of these bushes always reminded me of the rank grass in a churchyard: both are nourished by putrid exhalations; the one speaks of death past, and the other too often of death to come.”

   “We called […] in and out of rivers, streams of death in life, whose banks were rotting into mud, whose waters, thickened into slime, invaded the contorted mangroves, that seemed to writhe at us in the extremity of an impotent despair.”

   “The team that found the species living in a mangrove forest also included Thai wildlife YouTuber JoCho Sippawat, who is also an author on the paper published last week.”

   “This lush forest, just a few miles from the Guatemalan border, teems with diverse wildlife – from crocodiles and crabs to fish darting through seemingly endless mangroves. […] The Barra de Santiago is bordered on one side by mangroves with the ocean on the other; the project will be the first to build houses on the mangrove side.”

2. (broadly)A forest of such shrubs or trees.
3. (broadly)Preceded by a descriptive word: any of various shrubs or trees of genera other than Rhizophora which resemble plants of this genus in appearance and habitat.
4. (also, attributive, broadly)Synonym of mangal (“a tropical and subtropical coastal intertidal swampland ecosystem characterized by mangroves (sense 1) or similar shrubs and trees”).

   “There has been some investigation into the potential of seaweeds as a carbon store, and although more is needed, one study says that seaweed habitats are believed to be the most productive of all coastal vegetated ecosystems, and suggested that the world's seaweed sequesters as much carbon as all the planet’s seagrass meadows, saltmarshes and mangroves combined.”