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Avicennia officinalis
Also called Baen, Bina, White Mangrovetree, Indian Mangrove
Avicennia officinalis is a tropical mangrove tree from the Acanthus family, also called Indian mangrove. It grows as a low bushy shrub when young and matures into a columnar tree up to 15 m, sometimes 30 m, on riverbanks and inland clay soils near tidal estuaries.
Avicennia officinalis is a species of mangrove also known as Indian mangrove. The genus Avicennia is named after the famous Persian scientist Ibn Sina.
Avicennia officinalis ranges from the eastern Indian Ocean to the western Pacific, along the shores of India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei, Timor Leste, New Guinea, and northern and eastern Australia (Northern Territory, Queensland, and New South Wales).
The 1889 book The Useful Native Plants of Australia records "mangrove egaie of the Cleveland Bay aboriginals; tagontagon of the Rockhampton aboriginals, baa-lunn, and ttchoonche are other aboriginal names. The fruit is heart-shaped, with two thick cotyledons. The aboriginals of Cleveland Bay dig a hole in the ground, where they light a good fire; when well ignited, they throw stones over it, which when sufficiently heated, they arrange horizontally at the bottom, and lay on the top the egaie fruit, sprinkling a little water over it; they cover it with bark, and over the whole, earth is placed to prevent the steam from evaporating too freely. During the time required for baking (about two hours), they dig another hole in the sand; the softened egaie is put into it, they pour water twice over it, and the midamio is now fit for eating. They resort to that sort of food during the wet season when precluded from searching for any other." (Murrell's testimony,* quoted by Mens. Thozet.) In Salt-water estuaries all round the coast.
Avicennia alba · Avicennia balanophora · Avicennia bicolor · Black mangrove · Avicennia integra · Gray mangrove · Avicennia rumphiana · Avicennia schaueriana · Black Mangrove
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Avicennia officinalis by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
