Trees, with alternate coriaceous stalked leaves, their stipules sheathing the stem. Flowers perfect; calyx 5-lobed; stamens 8; ovary 3-celled; ovule orthotropous. Fruit a nutlet, inclosed in the thickened calyx-tube; seed erect; embryo axillary in ruminate farinaceous albumen; radicle superior, ascending, turned toward the hilum. Of this, the Buckwheat family with thirty widely distributed genera, only Coccolobis is arborescent in North America.
1. COCCOLOBIS P. Br.
Trees or shrubs. Leaves coriaceous, entire, orbicular, ovate, obovate, or lanceolate, petiolate, their stipules inclosing the branch above the node with membranaceous truncate entire brown persistent sheaths. Flowers jointed on ebracteolate pedicels, in 1 or few-flowered fascicles subtended by a minute bract and surrounded by a narrow truncate membranaceous sheath, each pedicel and those above it being surrounded by a similar sheath, the fascicles gathered in elongated terminal and axillary racemes inclosed at the base of the sheath of the nearest leaf and sometimes also in a separate sheath; calyx cup-shaped, the lobes ovate, rounded, thin, white, reflexed after anthesis, and thickening and inclosing the nutlet; stamens with filiform or subulate filaments dilated and united at base into a short discoid cup adnate to the tube of the calyx; anthers ovoid, introrse, 2-celled, the cells parallel, opening longitudinally; ovary free, sessile, 3-angled, contracted into a short stout style, divided into three short or elongated stigmatic lobes. Fruit ovoid or globose, rounded or acute and crowned at apex by the persistent lobes of the calyx, narrowed at base; flesh thin and acidulous, more or less adnate to the thin crustaceous or bony wall of the nutlet often divided on the inner surface near the base into several more or less intrusive plates. Seed subglobose, acuminate at apex, 3—6-lobed; testa membranaceous, minutely pitted, dark red-brown, and lustrous.
Coccolobis is confined to the tropics of the New World, with about one hundred and twenty species distributed from southern Florida to Mexico, Central America, Brazil, and Peru. It possesses astringent properties sometimes utilized in medicine. Many of the species produce hard dark valuable wood.
Coccolobis, from κοκκος and λοβός, is in allusion to the character of the fruit.
CONSPECTUS OF THE NORTH AMERICAN SPECIES.
Fruits crowded, in drooping racemes; leaves broadly ovate to suborbicular, cordate at base.1. [C. uvifera] (D). Fruits not crowded, in erect or spreading racemes; leaves ovate to oblong-lanceolate.2. [C. laurifolia] (D).
1. [Coccolobis uvifera] Jacq. Sea Grape.
Leaves broadly ovate to suborbicular rounded or sometimes short-pointed at apex, deeply cordate at base, with undulate margins, thick and coriaceous, minutely reticulate-venulose, dark green and lustrous above, paler and puberulous below, 4′—5′ long, 5′—6′ wide, with a stout often bright red midrib frequently covered below with pale hairs, and about 5 pairs of conspicuous primary veins red on the upper side, arcuate near the margins and connected by cross veinlets; gradually turning red or scarlet and falling during their second or third years; petioles short, stout, flattened, puberulous, abruptly enlarged at base, leaving in falling large pale elevated orbicular or semiorbicular scars; stipular sheath ⅛′ broad, slightly puberulous, persistent during 2 or 3 years. Flowers appearing almost continuously throughout the year on slender puberulous pedicels ⅛′ long, in 1—6-flowered subsessile fascicles, in terminal and axillary thick-stemmed many-flowered racemes 6′—14′ in length; calyx ⅛′ across when expanded, the lobes puberulous on the inner surface and rather longer than the red stamens; ovary oblong, with short stigmatic lobes. Fruit crowded, in long hanging racemes, ovoid to obovoid, ¾′ long, gradually narrowed into a stalk-like base, purple or greenish white, translucent, with thin juicy flesh, and a thin-walled light red nutlet.