11. CHRYSOBALANUS L.
Trees or shrubs, with stout branchlets covered with pale lenticels, and fibrous roots. Leaves alternate, entire, coriaceous, short-petiolate, persistent; stipules minute, deciduous. Flowers perfect, short-pedicellate, small, creamy white, in axillary or terminal dichotomously branched slender canescent cymes, with conspicuous deciduous bracts; calyx turbinate-campanulate, 5-lobed, the lobes imbricated in the bud, without bracts, deciduous; disk thin, adnate to the calyx-tube; petals 5, alternate with the lobes of the calyx, spatulate, deciduous; stamens (in the arborescent species) indefinite in a single continuous series, inserted with the petals on the margin of the disk; filaments filiform, hairy, free or slightly united at base; anthers ovoid, ovary sessile in the bottom of the calyx-tube, pubescent or glabrous, 1-celled; style rising from the base of the ovary, filiform, terminated by a minute truncate stigma; ovules 2, collateral, ascending; raphe dorsal; the micropyle inferior. Fruit a fleshy 1-seeded drupe with pulpy flesh, a coriaceous or crustaceous stone 5 or 6-angled toward the base and imperfectly 5 or 6-valved, the valves reticulate-veined. Seed erect; seed-coat chartaceous, light brown; embryo filling the cavity of the seed; cotyledons thick and fleshy; radicle inferior, very short.
Chrysobalanus is represented in the south Atlantic states by a shrubby species confined to the coast region from Georgia to Alabama, and by an arborescent species, an inhabitant of the shores of southern Florida, and widely distributed through the maritime regions of tropical America, and found in various forms on the coast of western tropical Africa. The insipid fruit of the arborescent species is eaten by negroes; the seeds contain a considerable quantity of oil; and the astringent bark, leaves and roots have been used in medicine.
The generic name is from χρυσός and βάλανος, in allusion to the supposed golden fruit of one of the species.
1. [Chrysobalanus icaco] L. Cocoa Plum.
Leaves broad-elliptic or round-obovate, rounded or slightly emarginate at apex, cuneate at base, glabrous, coriaceous, obscurely reticulate-veined, dark green and lustrous on the upper surface, light yellow-green on the lower surface, 1′—3½′ long and 1′—2½′ wide, with a broad conspicuous midrib rounded on the upper side and thin primary veins, standing on the branches at an acute angle and appearing to be pressed against them; petioles stout, ⅛′—¼′ in length; stipules acuminate, ⅛′ long. Flowers ⅓′ long, on short thick club-shaped hoary-tomentose pedicels, in cymes 1′—2′ in length; appearing in Florida continuously during the spring and summer months on the growing branches; calyx hoary-tomentose, the lobes nearly triangular, acute, more or less pubescent on the inner surface and about half as long as the narrow white petals; ovary hoary-pubescent; style long and slender, clothed nearly to the apex with pale hairs. Fruit nearly globose or oval-ovoid, 1½′—1¾′ in diameter, with a smooth bright pink, yellow, or creamy white skin, white sweet juicy flesh often ¼′ thick, and more or less adherent to the stone rounded at base, acute or acuminate at apex, 5 or 6-angled below the middle, about 1′ long and twice as long as broad, indehiscent or finally separating into 5 or 6 valves, the walls composed of a thin red-brown dry outer layer and a thick interior layer of hard woody fibre; seed-coat lined with a thick white reticulated fibrous coat.
Usually a broad shrub 10°—12° high, forming dense thickets, with erect branches and dark red-brown branchlets thickly covered for four or five years with lenticels, occasionally on the borders of low hummocks arborescent with reclining or rarely erect stems 20°—30° long and 1° in diameter, or on the margins of ocean beaches often not more than 1° or 2° tall. Bark dark red-brown and scaly, separating into long thin scales. Wood heavy, hard, strong, close-grained, light brown often tinged with red, with thin lighter colored sapwood of about 10 layers of annual growth.
Distribution. Florida, saline shores, river banks and low hummocks, Cape Canaveral to Bay Biscayne, and on the west coast from the mouth of the Caloosahatchie River to the southern keys; through the West Indies to southern Brazil, and on the tropical west coast of Africa. Passing into
Chrysobalanus icaco var. pellocarpa DC.
Differing from the type in its rather larger leaves spreading and less crowded on the branches, its oblong to oblong-obovoid dark purple or nearly black usually rather smaller fruit, and in its long-acuminate and more prominently angled stone.
A tree, 20°—30° or rarely 50° high, with an erect trunk 12′—16′ in diameter, erect and spreading branches forming a wide open head, and slender branchlets marked by scattered pale lenticels; often smaller and occasionally a shrub. Bark gray slightly tinged with red and covered with small closely appressed scales.
Distribution. Florida, banks of streams and borders of the Everglades, near Little River to the Everglade keys, Dade County; on the Bahama Islands and in Jamaica.