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The Sun-Baked Speculator
Tom Ryan

01/23/2005
Trees and Markets: Mangroves

There are generally eight to ten classes of tree roots: hanging, epiphytic, tap, lateral, parasitic, stilt, banyan, buttress, breathing, reproductive. The most spectacular tend to be the stilt, banyan and buttress roots because of their large size above ground. Buttressing, however, is a misnomer, as counting has shown that these types of roots are most prevalent on the windward and upslope sides of the trees, rather than the downslope or lee side.

From Menninger, “Fantastic Trees”: "Although the term buttress is often in use to describe the habit of these types of roots, it would appear to be an incorrect general description of the development or modification of the root. Observations show that the function of these types of highly visible and often spectacular roots is usually a pull against the stem and crown in cases of stress, therefore they do not function as buttresses but rather as guys or stays. Leaning trees have their greatest developments of these roots on the side away from the direction of trunk slant. Similarly, trees growing on a hillside have larger and more prominent roots on the upper side of the slope. In such cases it is obvious that they are subjected to a tension rather than a compression force."

This suggests that the principle of least rooting effort involves development of a system of stays and that the trees readily recognize prevailing wind conditions. In the spirit of the initial post by the Chair, one wonders if this has implications for stock prices, that is, that the longer the price has stayed in a relatively narrow range and the stock has been sending out its lateral root, the more likely it is to regress back to its median of that range when a hard wind blows it into the extreme end of the range (on either side), and whether a substantial new high or low out of that range presages a broken root and uplifted or crashed tree

James Sogi adds:

We have a surf spot called "Pine Trees," but they are mangroves. My brother-in-law during Hurricane Andrew hid his boat in the mangroves and tied lines to the mangrove roots. They don't come out during a hurricane. Bulldozers can't even uproot the mangroves. These are what Tom is talking about. The mangroves form a big triangle base. Then there are a bunch of them that interlock.

http://tinyurl.com/66e3s (what is mangrove)

http://tinyurl.com/46ply (what is mangrove)

http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0110/p07s01-wosc.html (as barrier to tsunamis)

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