ABSTRACT
Mangroves are woody plants that grow in saline soils. Tomlinson[1] considered 20 genera with 54 species as mangrove species of which 9 genera and 34 species constituted “true mangroves.” He established fi ve criteria to typify a true mangrove, including the ecophysiological capacity for excluding salinity. The other four criteria were the following: complete fi delity to the mangrove environment, a major role in the structure of the community and capacity to form pure stands, morphological specialization that adapts them to their environment, and taxonomic isolation. Tomlinson also listed 46 genera and 60 woody species as mangrove associates and was emphatic that the number of mangrove associates is a potentially large list of species, given the many habitats that converge with the mangrove environments:
The ecological literature seems incapable of being reduced to a simple set of rules to account for the diversity of vegetation types within the broad generic concept of mangal. Lack of uniformity is… a measure of the plasticity of mangroves and their ability to colonize such an enormous range of habitats.
