3. LAGUNCULARIA Gærtn.
A tree, with scaly bark, terete pithy branchlets, and naked buds. Leaves opposite, glabrous, thick and coriaceous, oblong or elliptic, obtuse or emarginate at apex, marked toward the margin with minute tubercles; their petioles conspicuously biglandular. Flowers usually perfect or polygamo-monœcious, minute, flattened, greenish white, sessile, in simple terminal axillary tomentose spikes generally collected in leafy panicles, with ovate acute hoary-tomentose bracts and bractlets; calyx-tube turbinate, with 5 prominent ridges opposite the lobes of the limb and 5 intermediate lesser ridges, furnished near the middle with 2 minute appendages, and coated with dense pale tomentum, the limb urceolate, 5-parted to the middle, the divisions triangular, obtuse or acute, erect, persistent; disk epigynous, flat, 10-lobed, the 5 lobes opposite the petals broader than those opposite the calyx-lobes, hairy; petals 5, nearly orbicular, contracted into a short claw inserted on the bottom of the calyx-limb, ciliate on the margins, caducous; stamens 10, inserted in 2 ranks; anthers cordate, apiculate; ovary 1-celled; style short, crowned with a slightly 2-lobed capitate stigma. Fruit 10-ribbed, coriaceous, hoary-pubescent, elongated, obovoid, flattened, crowned with the calyx-limb, unequally 10-ribbed, the 2 lateral ribs produced into narrow wings, 1-seeded; flesh coriaceous, corky toward the interior, inseparable from the thin-walled crustaceous stone dark red and lustrous on the inner surface. Seed suspended, obovoid or oblong; seed-coat membranaceous, dark red; radicle elongated, slightly longer and nearly inclosed by the green cotyledons.
Laguncularia consists of a single species of tropical America and Africa.
The generic name is from laguncula, in allusion to the supposed resemblance of the fruit to a flask.
1. [Laguncularia racemosa] Gærtn. Buttonwood. White Mangrove.
Leaves slightly tinged with red when they unfold, and at maturity dark green on the upper and lighter green or pale on the lower surface, 1½′—2½′ long and 1′—1½′ wide; petioles red, ½′ in length. Flowers ¼′ long, in hoary-tomentose spikes produced throughout the year from the axils of young leaves and 1½′—2′ long. Fruit about ½′ long.
A tree, 30°—60° high, with a trunk 12′—20′ in diameter, stout spreading branches forming a narrow round-topped head, and slender glabrous branchlets somewhat angled at first, often marked with minute pale spots and dark red-brown, becoming in their second year terete, light reddish brown or orange color, thickened at the nodes, and marked by conspicuous ovate leaf-scars; or northward in Florida a low shrub. Bark of the trunk ¼′ thick, brown slightly tinged with red, the surface broken into long ridge-like scales. Wood heavy, hard, strong, close-grained, dark yellow-brown, with lighter colored sapwood of 10—12 layers of annual growth. The bark contains a large amount of tannic acid and is sometimes used in tanning leather, and is astringent and tonic.
Distribution. Muddy tidal shores of bays and lagoons; southern Florida from Cape Canaveral and Cedar Keys to the southern keys; common and of its largest size in Florida on the shores of Shark River, Monroe County; common in Bermuda, the Bahamas, the Antilles, tropical Mexico and Central America, tropical South America and western Africa.