The Formosan Kandelia

We're a big family of Formosan kandelia, hailing from Chuwei, at the mouth of the Tamsui River, in northern Taiwan.

The river brings with it a lot of rich alluvial deposits, so when you drop by our home, you may smell some "strange odors" first.

Don't think we're a bunch of slobs to live here. We're just trying to do our duty: protecting the riverbank. We act as a buffer against winds and waves.

We also protect the silt in the rivermouth from being washed away so little animals can live there peacefully. And at high tide they can climb up on us to get away. Professor Lu Kuang-yang of National Taiwan Normal University has found out another value of ours: when our leaves fall off, they're food for fish.

So even though we may have a bit of smell, we've still got a lot of friends. Insects, shrimp, and crabs often hang around looking for food carried down by the current, and mudskippers wriggle around in the front yard, carrying on a dance contest.

The rich aquatic life attracts birds, too. The most presumptuous are the flocks of white egrets who stop for a rest right on our heads. It's outrageous the way animals are always pushing us plants around!

Mankind seems to have a little more conscience. Remembering how we maintain the riverbanks and look after our friends in the water, they've included us in a genus of over 100 (some say 55) species of tropical and subtropical plants that protect rivermouths and shorelands, with the lovely name of "mangrove," or Rhizophora.

Among the mangroves, we're one of the less sturdy types. The others can stand heat, but we need just the right temperature--not too hot and not too cold. So in the whole world the only places we live are southern China, India, Borneo, the Ryukyus, southern Japan--and Taiwan's Tamsui, which has the biggest family of all, covering 60 hectares.

If you go to the mouth of the Tamsui and see some plants about three to seven meters high with bushy tops and aerial roots, that's us!

We live in the tidewater belt between the river and the sea, half the time up to our knees in water. So if people want to visit us, they'd better come at low tide-- and wear wading boots. At that time our "carpet" is a bed of mud, and people some times leave us their shoes as souvenirs.

Not to brag, but you've got to have a little something to get along here. The dense mud keeps out oxygen and contains corrosive acids, so seeds can't grow in it. So guess how we propagate?

The mother carries her babies, just like people do.

We flower in June and July and bear fruit from August to October. But the little seeds cling to Mother and don't drop off. In November they sprout down a tender little shoot that looks like the tip of a brush. That's why the Chinese call us "water brushes."

The mother is "pregnant" for six months, until the babies (we don't have family planning) are 15 to 40 cm. long and fall to earth.

In the mud, they grow aerial roots to absorb oxygen from the water. And to get oxygen from the air and expel carbon dioxide, they grow some sponge-like organizations on their skin, which aren't very pretty. But they can breathe!

To deal with the problem of being steeped in salt water half of the day, we use another trick. We get rid of excess salt from our stems by sending it up into old leaves, which fall off, returning it to the sea.

That's not all our leaves do. Because it's so salty here, we need to store up water. So our big, broad, oval-shaped leaves have a thick, oily skin like desert plants to keep the water from evaporating.

Of course, baby kandelia don't have to settle down close to home. Washed out by the tide, they can travel over the ocean for hundreds of miles looking for a new place to live.

The way they stay alive at sea is this: floating on the surface of the waves, their green skin performs photosynthesis, while the root portion, the slender "water brush," stays in the water to keep from getting baked by the sun. With no mishaps, they can keep this up for a year, until they drift ashore.

Based on this ability, some people say our ancestors may have "swum" over to Taiwan from southern China, but other scientists speculate that the pioneers who came here during the Ming dynasty (1368-- 1644) may have brought us over to help them with land conservancy.

Five years ago, people wanted to cut us down, fill up our home and build houses. Luckily, Chou Ch'ang-hung of the Academia Sinica called out for our protection and they stopped. It was a close call!

This March, we were made part of the first environmental protection area under the Statute for the Conservation of Cultural Resources. The Council for Cultural Planning and Development and the Tourism Bureau have allocated NT$10 million (about US$250,000) to build a management station with a viewing platform equipped with telescopes, so people will keep their distance--for safety's sake.

Our biggest headache at present is the refuse accumulating at Chuwei, which is affecting our children's development. We've heard that the Bureau of Environmental Protection, the Forestry Bureau, and the Water Conservancy Bureau spend around NT$1.5 million each year cleaning up the waste around here.

But to the way of thinking of us kandelia, the real problem lies upstream, where most of the refuse comes from. So we'd like to ask the people and factories along the Tamsui River not to discharge their wastes into the river. Think about it: how would you like it if someone dumped garbage in front of your house every day?

[Picture Caption]

During the kandelia's "gestation period" baby kandelia hang like hooks from the mother branch.

(photo by Cheng Yuan-ch'un)

After the little kandelia have dropped off, they grow up underneath their mother trees.

A little crab hangs out near a young kandelia.

After the little kandelia have dropped off, they grow up underneath their mother trees.

A little crab hangs out near a young kandelia.