Like most mammals, mangroves are viviparous (bringing forth live young), rather than producing dormant resting seeds like most flowering plants. Mangroves disperse propagules via water with varying degrees of vivipary or embryonic development while the propagule is attached to the parent tree. — “Reproductive Strategies of Mangroves,” Newfound Harbor Marine Institute
David LaFrance, Faire Pousser, 2014 (Artist Website, Gallery Website)
Oil on canvas
84” x 72”
The mangrove spawn,
a sideways sort of
seed, floats and bobs
in the world where
everything’s an egg,
(almost) as for the child
who peered over a nest’s
edge and—present!—
three blue eggs so real
as to be candy. He didn’t
eat. The mangrove pod
bobs and weaves until
it settles rather than
dives sideways on a
habitable spit of sand,
the propagule a kind of
roving ovary, a buoyant
earth-berry in a way
(if everything’s an egg,
everything has one),
an ore that varies
by territory and weather,
an ur-rover, a veritable
apiary (almost), an ova,
a reed, a doe, a ray, and
a—forgive me—a me.