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Flora
Sundarbans is synonemous with mangrove forests. Diverse groups of mangrove plants (About 29 families and 49 genera of trees, shrubs and herbs) are found in this largest block of deltaic islands. Mangroves are the producers of this extremely delicate biome on which depends all the consumers, herbivores and carnivores, macro and micro, predators or decomposers, directly or indirectly. But mangroves are not the only producers in this ecotone of land and waters. There are numerous phytoplanktons, which fix huge amount of solar energy in the aquatic environment and supports a complete food chain starting from herbivorous zooplanktons to various groups of carnivorous nektons. Seaweeds or benthic macro algae are numerous in the Sundarbans, which usually covers the neumatophores and roots of mangrove forests, piers of jetties, margins and floors of intertidal pools, net ropes, buoys, dykes and boulders etc. But Sundarbans is not only about waters and muddy ambience of mangrove forests, the beaches in the seaward sides have well grown sand dunes behind the supra littoral zones, which are again over grown by sand binders like Ipomea pescarpes, a creeper. Thus halophytic, hydrophytic, xerophytic, all dfferent kinds of floristic diversity are there in the Sundarbans.
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