Marina grey

It's quite fitting that the genus is named after a 10th century Persian physician and naturalist, Ibn Sina or 'Avicenna'. For the Grey Mangrove grows as far west as the Levant, where stunted trees cast their roots through the saline dunes of the Sinai Desert in Egypt. A specimen from the Red Sea represented its species in the original botanical description of Avicennia marina. But this tenacious coloniser of fresh shores and fringe habitats ranges far from its type locality, holding fort in sout