You're listening to Shortwave from NPR.

Today, we're going to talk about a swamp creature, a gnarled thing that lives partially

submerged in saltwater and mud.

But this creature isn't scary.

It's actually quite beautiful.

It's a mangrove tree, and it's got some pretty cool superpowers.

For starters, it grows on coastlines in salty waters that would kill most other trees,

but not the mighty mangrove.

They are able to effectively excrete the salt out of their cells.

So they're like sweating salt?

Yeah, effectively they are.

You can find really cool pictures online of the leaves that just have these little like

salt crystals on the surface of the leaves.

Wow!

Alex Moore studies the salt-sweating trees in American Samoa.

Around the world, mangroves only grow close to the equator.

They love tropical and subtropical coastlines in places like Indonesia, Mozambique, and

Brazil.

In the US, they're in Florida.

In many of these places, mangroves are under threat, which should alarm everyone because

these trees have another critical superpower.

They suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and trap it in soil and sediment.

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