Rhizophoreae
A natural order of usually quite glabrous trees and shrubs, with terete branchlets swollen at the nodes, almost wholly tropical, and to a great extent littoral. Flowers usually hermaphrodite, axillary, disposed in cymes, panicles, spikes, or racemes, rarely densely clustered or solitary, small or rather large, bibracteolate or ebracteolate; calyx tube more or less adnate to the ovary, rarely free; limb three to fourteen lobed or entire, persistent; petals as many as the calyx lobes, usually small, concave or involute, and embracing the stamens, notched, bifid, or lacerate, rarely entire, convolute or inflexed in bud; stamens twice, or three or four times, as many as the petals, rarely equal in number; ovary usually inferior, two to five (rarely six) celled. Fruit usually coriaceous, crowned with the calyx limb, indehiscent or rarely septicidal, one-celled and one-seeded, or with two to five one-seeded cells. Leaves opposite and stipulate, rarely alternate and exstipulate, petioled, thickly coriaceous, usually quite entire, in a few cases sinuate-crenulate or serrulated; stipules interpetiolar, very caducous. The wood of Rhizophora Mangle is described as edible, and when fermented produces a light wine. The order comprises seventeen genera, and about fifty species, none of which are of horticultural value. Examples: Haplopetalum, Rhizophora.