Alligators, according to Long, subsist ‘at certain seasons on the 
fruit of this tree, and he describes them as watching for it, when 
ripe, to drop into the water. The wood is very light, and is 
employed by the negroes as a substitute for cork, to stop up the 
mouths of their calabashes and other rude vessels. The floats of 
fishing nets are also made of it. Anona palustris flowered for 
the first time in June, 1843, in the stove at Hurst House. The 
fruit here figured ripened in August, 1845. 
Descr. A free, six to fifteen feet in height, with ever-green, 
elliptical-ovate, very acute, glabrous Zeaves, on rather short petioles. 
Peduncles lateral, but not axillary, solitary, single-flowered. Calyz 
of three small rounded lobes. Pefals thick and fleshy, pale 
greemish yellow, each with a red blotch within, deeper in the 
inner petals. Stamens and pistils numerous, crowded. Fruit 
ovato-rotundate, yellowish-brown when ripe, deep orange within, 
formed of a congeries of closely compact acini. Seed conferrumi- 
nated, as in the Genus. 
Fig. 1. Fruit. 2. The same laid open. 3. Seed in its pulp :—natural size. 
4. Seed laid open :—magnified. 
