Distribution. Low muddy tide-water shores of lagoons and bays; Florida, Cape Canaveral and Cedar Keys to the southern keys; of its largest size in Florida on Lost Man’s River near Cape Sable; at its northern limits a low shrub; common on the Bahama Islands, in the Antilles, on the shores of Central America and tropical South America, on the Galapagos Islands, and on the west coast of Africa.
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.