SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 
CHRYSOBALANUS. 
Fiowers perfect; calyx 5-lobed, the lobes imbricated in ewstivation ; petals 5, im- 
bricated in estivation ; stamens 15 to 50; ovary 1-celled; ovules 2, ascending. Fruit 
a fleshy drupe, 1-seeded. Leaves alternate, entire. 
Chrysobalanus, Linneus, Gen. 365.— A. L. de Jussieu, 1251. — Bentham & Hooker, Gen. i. 606. — Baillon, Hist. 
Gen. 340. — Meisner, Gen. 102. — Endlicher, Gren. Pi. i. 480. 
Icaco, Adanson, Fam. Pl. ii. 805. 
Trees or shrubs, with stout branchlets covered with pale lenticels, and fibrous roots. Leaves 
alternate, entire, coriaceous, short-petiolate, persistent; stipules minute, deciduous. Flowers short- 
pedicellate, small, creamy white, in axillary or terminal dichotomously-branched silky canescent cymes 
with divisions developed from the axils of conspicuous deciduous bracts. Calyx turbinate-campanulate, 
five-lobed, ebracteolate, deciduous. Disk thin, adnate to the calyx-tube. Petals five, inserted in the 
mouth of the calyx-tube on the margin of the disk, alternate with the lobes of the calyx, spatulate, 
deciduous. Stamens fifteen, in groups of three opposite the lobes of the calyx, or indefinite in a single 
continuous series, inserted with the petals on the margin of the disk; filaments filiform, free or 
slightly connate at the base; anthers ovoid, introrse, two-celled, the cells opening longitudinally, or 
sometimes wanting. Ovary sessile in the bottom of the calyx-tube, hirsute or glabrous, one-celled ; 
style rising from the base of the ovary, filiform, terminated by a minute truncate stigma; ovules two, 
collateral, ascending, anatropous; raphe dorsal, the micropyle inferior. Fruit drupaceous ; epicarp 
smooth, membranaceous; mesocarp pulpy; putamen coriaceous or crustaceous, more or less adherent to 
the mesocarp, smooth and indehiscent, or five or six-angled toward the base and imperfectly five or 
six-valved, the valves reticulate-veined. Seed suberect, exalbuminous; testa chartaceous, light brown. 
Embryo fillmg the cavity of the seed; cotyledons thick and fleshy ; radicle inferior, very short. 
The genus Chrysobalanus is represented in the southern Atlantic states by a shrubby species? 
confined to the coast region of Georgia, Florida, and Alabama ; and a second species which occasionally 
attains the size of a small tree inhabits the shores of southern Florida, and is widely distributed through 
the maritime regions of tropical America, and, in various forms which have sometimes been considered 
species, along the coast of western tropical Africa.’ 
1 Chrysobal blongifolius, Michaux, Fl. Bor-Am. i. 283.— _ inclined to believe that Chrysobalanus Icaco was of American origin, 
Pursh, Fl. Am. Sept. i. 329.— Nuttall, Gen. i. 301. — Elliott, St. and had been naturalized on the African coast by seed carried 
i. 539.— De Candolle, Prodr. ii. 526.— Torrey & Gray, Fl. N. from one continent to the other by the Atlantic currents, or by 
Am. i. 406.— Chapman, Fi. 119. man. The view that it was transported across the Atlantic from 
Persea longipeda, Bertoloni, Misc. Bot. fase. xiii. t. 2. the New World to the Old by ocean currents is supported by the 
2 Alphonse de Candolle (Géographie Botanique, ii. 784, 792) was fact that the early European travelers found the Cocoa Plum in 
