Black Mangroves in Bloom

Our neighbor and mosquito expert Dan Kline alerted us to this year's unusual flowering of black mangroves at Cedar Key. He mentioned that these and some other flowers attract mosquitoes.We have also learned that mangroves are attractive to bees and were formerly important to the honey-producing business. We took the above photos in late June.

Although the abundance of flowering here in 2011 was unusual, we know that black mangroves have flowered at Cedar Key in other recent years. We took the photo below in October of 2008 of a tree covered with "seeds"--actually the trees are considered live-bearers, because the seeds have already germinated when their capsules fall into the water.