Drones Spread My Seed Far, Says Virile Mangrove

Feb 05, 2018

A mangrove along the Irrawaddy River in Myanmar is boasting 100,000 new saplings a day, thanks to drone technology.

“I enjoy spreading my seed as far as possible,” said the potent male tree in a Tilted Glass exclusive interview as it splashed its roots in the coastal saline.  “It’s a great time to be a mangrove.”

It hasn’t been easy lately.  The Myanmar Coast once grew with thick mangroves forests.  Today most of that has been cleared by humans, resulting in loss of habitat for wildlife, lack of coastline protection against hurricanes, and inability to clean carbon greenhouse gases.

In hopes of reversing the environmental damage, villages in the river delta have taken to spreading the mangrove’s seeds by hand, but the work has proved highly labor intensive.  That’s when a startup called BioCarbon Engineering stepped in to help.

“These drones come with a map and an efficient plan.  My seeds are really taking off!  I’m hopping from house to house and taking root.  Is this not the dream of all mangroves?”

Some have come to question this somewhat conservative viewpoint.  It’s an age-old saying: Mangrove males are hard-wired to spread their seeds since there is no biological reason to limit mangroves from spreading into as much as Mother Earth as possible.  

The reality is not so black and white.  Mangroves produce both male and female flowers.  There is much evidence to suggest that the tree and all its flowers seek as much genetic diversification as possible.  “If you men only knew,” said one coastline cluster unafraid to speak out on the matter.  

This has scared some men who prefer to see the female flower as strictly monogamous-oriented.  Some men have even taken to chopping down mangroves they see as a threat to their viewpoints and converting them into agricultural land.

“Look this is so backwards,” said a representative from Myanmar’s ecosystem restoration program.  “I'm completely turned around now.  And time is running out.  We can’t be held back by old-fashioned beliefs regarding which mangroves are meant to spread their seeds and which are supposed to stay at home.  We are at a critical point to save our ecosystem.  We need to fight back.”

Upon this our virile mangrove smiled... just rooted there in the water and smiled as it looked above toward the drones as they spread outward through the sky like a ripple in water.