Rhizophora stylosa Griff.

Habit: Medium size tree up to 10 m tall. Roots:Aerial stiltroots developed from the trunk and branches basis.

Trunk & bark:

Bark gray to black, relatively smooth.

Leaves: Leaves simple, opposite, lower surface with scattered black dots; lamina broadly elliptic or ovate oblong, apex abruptly acute or blunt with mucronate tip, base cuneate, 10 18 x 4 10 cm, coriaceous. Stipule 46 cm long. Petiole short, 2 ½ 3 ½ cm long.

Inflorescences or flowers: Inflorescence axillary cymes, (4)58(16) flowered. Peduncles 2 ½5 cm, pedicels 510 mm. Flowers white or cream, bisexual, pedicellate; calyx 4lobed pale yellow, ovate; petals c. 8 mm long, densely hairy along the margins, rarely on the back; stamens 8 in number; style filiform, 46 mm shortly 2toothed.

Fruits: Fruit brown, obpyriform, with strongly contracted apex, not rugose, 2 ½ to 4 cm long.

Seeds /seedling: Vivipary. Propagule: seeds germinating in the fruit while the latter is still attached to the mother tree. Hypocotyl protruding from the fruit, cylindrical, around 40 – 50 cm long. Cotyledonary collar green when mature. Propagules dispersed by currents.

Used as firewood as other species of Rhizophora. Also used in plantations in mangrove restoration programs.