--- title: Swamps, marshes, mangroves and bogs — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «Swamps, marshes, mangroves and bogs», a lesson of the biology course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: A wetland is land that is soaked with water for much of the year: a marsh is full of reeds and grasses, a swamp has trees standing in --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/11-swamps-marshes-mangroves-and-bogs/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Biology](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/) / Swamps, marshes, mangroves and bogs # Swamps, marshes, mangroves and bogs Lesson 11 of the biology course of Mova's primary school: 17 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/biology/11-swamps-marshes-mangroves-and-bogs/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/11-swamps-marshes-mangroves-and-bogs/0/) — A wetland is land that is soaked with water for much of the year: a marsh is full of reeds and grasses, a swamp has trees standing in water, a bog is a cold wet sponge of moss, and a mangrove is a forest growing in salty mud by the sea. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/11-swamps-marshes-mangroves-and-bogs/1/) — Squeeze a handful of bog moss and water pours out as if from a bath sponge; a whole bog works like that, holding rain and letting it go slowly. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/11-swamps-marshes-mangroves-and-bogs/2/) — The hard thing about wetland mud is that it has almost no oxygen, so roots can suffocate and dead plants hardly rot; poke it with a stick and stinky bubbles of marsh gas come up. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/11-swamps-marshes-mangroves-and-bogs/3/) — Wetland living things have clever answers: mangroves grow breathing roots like snorkels, sundews and flytraps catch insects for the nitrogen the soil lacks, and fish like mudskippers even walk out onto the mud. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/11-swamps-marshes-mangroves-and-bogs/4/) — Wetlands are not wasteland: they soak up floods, clean water, and store huge amounts of carbon, so many countries now protect them and even build new ones. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/11-swamps-marshes-mangroves-and-bogs/6/) — Red mangrove seedlings start growing while still hanging on the parent tree, then drop like darts into the mud or float away; they can drift for months and still take root on a faraway shore. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/11-swamps-marshes-mangroves-and-bogs/7/) — Sphagnum, or bog moss, has big empty cells that fill with water, so it can hold up to about 20 times its own dry weight, and it makes the bog wet and acidic. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/11-swamps-marshes-mangroves-and-bogs/8/) — Peat is half-rotted dead plants, mostly bog moss, piled up over thousands of years; it grows only about 1 millimetre a year, because in cold, wet, acid, airless bogs rotting is very slow; peatlands cover only about 3 percent of the land but store more carbon than all the world's forests together. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/11-swamps-marshes-mangroves-and-bogs/9/) — Bog soil has very little nitrogen, so the sundew catches insects on sticky drops and the Venus flytrap snaps shut on them, and both digest their prey to get nitrogen. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/11-swamps-marshes-mangroves-and-bogs/10/) — A Venus flytrap closes only if its trigger hairs are touched twice within about 20 seconds, so raindrops and dust do not waste its energy; in the wild it grows only in a small area of North and South Carolina in the USA. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/11-swamps-marshes-mangroves-and-bogs/11/) — An alligator floats with only its eyes and nostrils above the water, because they sit on top of its head; the Florida Everglades is the only place where alligators and crocodiles live side by side. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/11-swamps-marshes-mangroves-and-bogs/12/) — Herons, mudskippers and other animals with backbones each have just one heart. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/11-swamps-marshes-mangroves-and-bogs/13/) — A grey heron stands perfectly still in shallow water, then shoots out its S-shaped neck like a spring to grab a fish or frog. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/11-swamps-marshes-mangroves-and-bogs/14/) — Mudskippers are fish of mangrove swamps that skip across the mud on their fins; they keep water in their gill chambers and breathe through their wet skin, so they can stay out of water for hours. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/11-swamps-marshes-mangroves-and-bogs/15/) — In airless marsh mud, bacteria rot dead plants and make methane and smelly hydrogen sulphide, the rotten-egg smell; old stories of will-o'-the-wisp lights may come from marsh gas, but scientists are not sure. - [17](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/11-swamps-marshes-mangroves-and-bogs/17/) — Wetlands soak up flood water like giant sponges and let it out slowly, and reed roots trap mud and clean the water. - [18](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/11-swamps-marshes-mangroves-and-bogs/18/) — Bogs and swamps can be dangerous to walk on, so always stay on paths and boardwalks, and never go near the water's edge where alligators live. - ← previous: [Rivers, lakes and ponds](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/10-rivers-lakes-and-ponds/) - next →: [Forests: woodland through the year and the great northern forest](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/12-forests-woodland-through-the-year/) - ↑ back to [Biology](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/)