Occurrence of Enhalus on the coast of Tanzania, E. Africa

Abstract

Den Hartog (1970) records the distribution of Enhalus acoroides (L.f.) Royle in the Indian Ocean as “…restricted to Ceylon, the southern coast of India, the northern part of Madagascar and the Seychelles. From the East African coast it is known only from a few localities in Kenya…” (p. 217). The world distribution of Enhalus is summarised in his Fig. 8, and the coast of Tanzania is exluded. On 3 March 1979, Enhalus acoroides was collected on a sandy—muddy beach at Ocean Road (39° 18′ E 6° 49′ S), Dar es Salaam. It forms a wide bed at the low water mark of spring tides. The leaves were covered with a thin layer of fine mud and there were some unidentified sea anemones on them. The rhizomes of all specimens collected had a sparse cover of the characteristic “persistent fibrous strands of decayed leaves”. All plants were about 100 cm long. The specimens are deposited in the Herbarium, Botany Department, University of Dar es Salaam.