Bruguiera gymnorhiza(L.) Lam. ex Savigny

KankraOriental MangroveOriental mangrove

WFO wfo-0000572747 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Bruguiera gymnorhiza, photographed by Greg Tasney
fig. a Greg Tasney, CC BY-SA 4.0 / 2022-06-02 / obs. 202882616

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

The specimen a real sheet, in a real collection

Herbarium
The New York Botanical Garden
Accession
192351
Filed as
Bruguiera gymnorhiza (L.) Lam.
Det. by
D. H. Lorence 2003-01-01
Collected
M. J. Balick 2000-08-13
Origin
FM
The sheet
View the digitised specimen (CC BY 4.0)

A real pressed plant, in a real collection, under the accession number above. Not an illustration of one. The holding institution does not serve this sheet’s image to third parties, so there is no photograph here. The record is real and the link goes to it. Where we hold no openly licensed sheet for a species this section is simply absent, and where a sheet never recorded who determined it, that field stays empty rather than being filled in. Roughly half of all herbarium sheets never recorded a determiner, which is ordinary.

Native range 50 botanical countries

Regions where Bruguiera gymnorhiza is native: Aldabra, Cape Provinces, Comoros, Djibouti, Kenya, KwaZulu-Natal, Madagascar, Mauritius, Mozambique, Mozambique Channel Is., Seychelles, Somalia, Tanzania, China Southeast, Hainan, Nansei-shoto, Andaman Is., Bangladesh, Borneo, Cambodia, Christmas I., India, Jawa, Lesser Sunda Is., Malaya, Maluku, Myanmar, New Guinea, Nicobar Is., Pakistan, Philippines, Solomon Is., Sri Lanka, Sulawesi, Sumatera, Thailand, Vietnam, New South Wales, Northern Territory, Queensland, Caroline Is., Fiji, Gilbert Is., Marianas, Marshall Is., Nauru, Samoa, Tonga, Vanuatu, Wallis-Futuna Is. Cape ProvincesDjiboutiKenyaKwaZulu-NatalMadagascarMozambiqueSomaliaTanzaniaChina SoutheastHainanBangladeshBorneoCambodiaIndiaJawaLesser Sunda Is.MalayaMalukuMyanmarNew GuineaPakistanPhilippinesSolomon Is.Sri LankaSulawesiSumateraThailandVietnamNew South WalesNorthern TerritoryQueenslandFiji AldabraComorosMauritiusMozambique Channel Is.SeychellesNansei-shotoAndaman Is.Christmas I.Nicobar Is.Caroline Is.MarianasMarshall Is.NauruSamoaTongaVanuatuWallis-Futuna Is.
Native distribution of Bruguiera gymnorhiza, after Kew’s World Checklist of Vascular Plants. Introduced, extinct and doubtful records are excluded, so this is where the plant is from, not everywhere it now grows. Regions too small to draw at this scale are marked with a dot.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Andaman Is. AND ASIA-TROPICAL
Bangladesh BAN
Borneo BOR
Cambodia CBD
Christmas I. XMS
India IND
Jawa JAW
Lesser Sunda Is. LSI
Malaya MLY
Maluku MOL
Myanmar MYA
New Guinea NWG
Nicobar Is. NCB
Pakistan PAK
Philippines PHI
Solomon Is. SOL
Sri Lanka SRL
Sulawesi SUL
Sumatera SUM
Thailand THA
Vietnam VIE
Aldabra ALD AFRICA
Cape Provinces CPP
Comoros COM
Djibouti DJI
Kenya KEN
KwaZulu-Natal NAT
Madagascar MDG
Mauritius MAU
Mozambique MOZ
Mozambique Channel Is. MCI
Seychelles SEY
Somalia SOM
Tanzania TAN
Caroline Is. CRL PACIFIC
Fiji FIJ
Gilbert Is. GIL
Marianas MRN
Marshall Is. MRS
Nauru NRU
Samoa SAM
Tonga TON
Vanuatu VAN
Wallis-Futuna Is. WAL
China Southeast CHS ASIA-TEMPERATE
Hainan CHH
Nansei-shoto NNS
New South Wales NSW AUSTRALASIA
Northern Territory NTA
Queensland QLD

Not drawn on the map: Gilbert Is.. We hold no public-domain boundary for this region, so it is listed rather than guessed at.

Region boundaries approximated from Natural Earth (public domain) and mapped to TDWG World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions (WGSRPD) level-3 botanical countries (Brummitt 2001). Indicative, not the official WGSRPD geometry.

Flowering 182 in flower of 371 examined

Proportion of examined Bruguiera gymnorhiza in flower, by month
Month In flower Examined Share 95% interval
Jan 4 15 27% 11% to 52%
Feb 18 35 51% 36% to 67%
Mar 11 25 44% 27% to 63%
Apr 13 39 33% 21% to 49%
May 15 29 52% 34% to 69%
Jun 21 39 54% 39% to 68%
Jul 19 32 59% 42% to 74%
Aug 30 46 65% 51% to 77%
Sep 20 30 67% 49% to 81%
Oct 9 18 50% 29% to 71%
Nov 18 43 42% 28% to 57%
Dec 4 20 20% 8% to 42%

Peak flowering in Sep. Each bar is the share of Bruguiera gymnorhiza observations in which someone actually recorded the reproductive state and found the plant in flower, not the raw number of flowering records. That distinction matters: people observe plants far more in spring than in winter, so a bare count of flowering records partly measures when people go outside. Dividing by the number examined removes that. 182 of 371 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. This is still a global aggregate and not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres. Where a species has fewer than 30 flowering records we do not draw this chart at all. Computed from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Where it actually grows measured, from 1,948 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 11.8 °C 15.2 °C 24.9 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 25.9 °C 28.3 °C 30.5 °C
Annual rainfall 1,018 mm 1,855 mm 3,417 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 65 mm 156 mm 503 mm

It is not found anywhere that gets close to freezing. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 1,948 research-grade observations of Bruguiera gymnorhiza that carry a coordinate, and this is the range those places actually span. The 5th and 95th percentiles are used rather than the minimum and maximum, because a single cultivated specimen in a heated conservatory should not widen a tropical plant's range to the Arctic.

This is not a hardiness zone. A USDA zone is the average annual extreme minimum temperature. The figure above is the mean daily minimum of the coldest month, which is a different quantity and is typically far warmer. Reading one as the other would place a plant several zones too warm, so we do not publish a hardiness zone, because we do not have one. Climate from CHELSA V2.1 (Karger et al. 2017); occurrences from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Also published as 17 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Bruguiera capensis Blume
  • Bruguiera conjugata (L.) Merr.
  • Bruguiera conjugata f. alba Stone
  • Bruguiera gymnorhiza f. alba (Stone) Fosberg
  • Bruguiera gymnorhiza var. nana Hatus.
  • Bruguiera gymnorhiza var. palun Blume
  • Bruguiera rhedii Tul.
  • Bruguiera rheedei Blume
  • Bruguiera rumphii Blume
  • Bruguiera wightii Blume
  • Bruguiera zippelii Blume
  • Bruguiera zippelii var. oblongifolia Blume
  • Rhizophora conjugata L.
  • Rhizophora gymnorhiza L.
  • Rhizophora palun DC.
  • Rhizophora rheedei Steud.
  • Rhizophora tinctoria Blanco

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
  3. Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
  4. Kew, World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP v16). native distribution by TDWG level-3 botanical country, and life form. CC BY 3.0. Retrieved 2026-06-04.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice and no toxicity claim, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.