Have you ever heard or seen the word "mangrove"? This word refers to several kinds of plants and trees that can grow and thrive in saltwater. Mangroves grow in groups near the sea, along different coastlines around the world. If any of you have ever been to the Everglades in Florida, you may have seen mangrove forests there. In Soc Trang, you can find some mangroves within the districts that are close to the sea. You can find mangrove forests across the Mekong Delta region too, in places like Ca Mau and An Giang.
There are multiple kinds of mangroves, but there are also some characteristics of appearance that many mangroves share. Mangrove plants or trees are often short (but some can be very tall), they usually grow in groups and they have a lot of long, thin roots that extend out of the water in which the mangroves grow. These roots weave around each other and sometimes look like tangled hair or earbuds that end up at the bottom of your backpack. Leaves grow on the top branches of older mangroves. Young mangroves that have just been planted look like pointy fingers sticking up out of the ground or "stalagmites," the thin rocks that form inside of caves.
