During the early period of its life there is nothing singular
in the growth of the plant In a few months, however, it sends out
arching adventitious roots, which on reaching the mud grasp it with
strong finger-like rootlets. These arching roots, too, send out from
their arches other roots that arch, and the arches of these similarly
repeat themselves, and so on, until the tree is underpinned and
supported and stayed by an elaborate and complicated system, which while
offering no resistance to the sweep of the seas, upholds the tree as no
solid trunk or stem could. Then from the plan of arches spring
offshoots, in time to become trees as great as the parent. Aerial roots
start a downward career from the overhanging branches, anchoring
themselves in the mud. Some young seedling drops and the pointed end
sticks deep in the mud, and grows forthwith, to possess arching and
aerial roots of its own, and to make confusion worse confounded. The
identity of the original founder of the grove is lost in the bewildering
labyrinth of its own arches, offshoots, and aerial roots, and of
independent trees to which it has given the mystery of life. One
floating radicle with its pent-up energy, having after weeks of drifting
and swaying this way and that to the slightest current and ripple,
grapples Mother Earth and makes a law to the ocean.
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