Mangrove tree blossoms for the first time at UNN Botanical Garden

A mangrove tree of the genus Rhizophora has blossomed for the first time in the greenhouse of the Botanical Garden of the UNN Institute of Biology and Biomedicine. The evergreen plant is part of the Tropical Pool exposition, which opened a year ago.

According to Dr. Alexander Shirokov, Director of the UNN Botanical Garden, this mangrove tree was transferred to Nizhny Novgorod as a small seedling from the Main Botanical Garden of the Russian Academy of Sciences five years ago.

"The mangrove tree took root at our garden, now it is already a young plant one and a half metres high, and in April 2024 it had its first flowers. Mangrove trees are slow-growing, rather capricious plants that require specific conditions, special water bodies with a high content of mineral salts. That is why they are quite rare in botanical gardens," he added.

Mangrove evergreen deciduous forests mainly occur in nature on the oceanic coasts of the tropics.

"Mangroves are especially valuable, protected areas. There are not so many of them on the planet, in some tropical countries special state programmes for their preservation have been created," Alexander Shirokov noted.