A SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. ROSACER. 
interior layer of hard woody fibre, or in the black-fruited form is thin and soft. The testa of the seed 
is thin and papery, light red-brown, and lined with a thick white reticulated fibrous coat. 
Chrysobalanus Icaco grows in Florida from Cape Canaveral to the shores of Bay Biscayne, and 
on the west coast from Caximbas Bay to the southern keys. It is common on the shores of the Antilles 
and on those of southern Mexico and Central America; it is found on the northern and eastern coasts 
of South America, where it extends as far south as southern Brazil, and occurs on the west coast of 
Africa from Senegambia to the Congo country.’ In Florida the Cocoa Plum is usually shrubby, and 
attains the size and habit of a tree only on the shores of the islands of the Everglades, in the neighbor- 
hood of Bay Biscayne, and on the banks of the Miami River above the influence of tide-water, where 
it sometimes forms dense impenetrable thickets of considerable extent. 
The wood of Chrysobalanus Icaco is heavy, hard, strong, and close-grained, and contains a few 
irregularly distributed open ducts and many thin medullary rays ; it is light brown, often tinged with 
red, with thin lighter colored sapwood composed of ten or twelve layers of annual growth. The 
specific gravity of the absolutely dry wood is 0.7709, a cubic foot weighing 48.04 pounds. 
The fruit, which resembles a plum in size and shape, is sweet and rather insipid ; it varies in color 
and in the amount of juice contained in the flesh, in the degree to which this adheres to the stone, and 
in the thickness of the wall of the stone? It appears to have been a favorite food of the Caribs at the 
time of the discovery of America, and it is mentioned in many of the early narratives.? It is eaten 
by negroes and sometimes by whites, both fresh and preserved in sugar.. The seeds when fresh have 
an agreeable odor, although they soon become rancid, and are considered a delicacy in the West Indies ; 
they contain a considerable quantity of oil, and under the name of varach seeds are sometimes sent to 
England from tropical Africa; strung on sticks, they are used instead of candles by the natives. The 
1 Guillemin, Perrottet & A. Richard, Fl. Seneg. Tent. i. 272.— 
Hooker f. & Bentham, Hooker Niger Fi. 336.— Oliver, Fl. Trop. 
Afr. ii. 365. 
? In Florida Chrysobalanus Icaco varies but little in the size and 
shape of the leaves, or in the form of the fruit. This is usually 
pink, or occasionally nearly white ; on some individuals, however, 
it is black, and then is smaller and more or less ovate, with narrower 
and rather softer stones than occur in the more spherical pink or 
white-skinned fruit, the two forms apparently never growing on the 
same plant. Within the tropics it shows a greater tendency to va- 
riation. Hooker f. (Martius Fl. Brasil. xiv. pt. ii. 7) considered 
the American and African plants specifically identical, and proposed. 
these varieties : — 
a, genuinus: leaves broadly obovate, obcordate, or orbiculate ; 
drupe fleshy, ovoid or obovoid, obtusely ribbed. 
B. pellocarpus : leaves.as in the variety a, although often smaller ; 
drupe obovoid, narrowed at the base, subacutely ribbed ; flesh thin. 
Chrysobalanus pellocarpus, Meyer, Prim. Fi. Esseq. 193. —Ben- 
tham, Hooker Jour. Bot. ii. 214. — Grisebach, Fl. Brit. W. Ind. 229. 
Chrysobalanus Icaco, var. p. pellocarpus, De Candolle, Prodr. ii. 
525. 
Guiana. 
vy. ellipticus: leaves elliptical-oblong, acute or subacute at the two 
extremities ; drupe as in variety a, but smaller. _ 
Chrysobalanus ellipticus, Sabine, Trans. Hort. Soc. Lond. v. 453. 
—De Candolle, Prodr. ii. 526.— Hooker f. & Bentham, J. c.— 
Oliver, J. c. 
(?) Chrysobalanus luteus, Sabine, 1. c.—. De Candolle, J. c. 
Upper and Lower Guinea. 
To this form, too, should perhaps be referred the African Chryso- 
balanus orbicularis, Schumacher & Thonning, Kongl. Dansk. Vidensk. 
Selsk. Afh. iv. 6 ; Pl. Guin, ii. 5. — Walpers, Rep. ii. 907. 
8 De los drboles & fructas Uamados hicacos, Oviedo, Hist. Nat. 
Gen. Ind. lib. viii. cap. 9. 
“La Fruta de Cuesco son Hobos, Hicacos, Macaguas, Guiabaras, 
i Mameis, que es la mejor de todas.” (Francisco Lopez de Gomara, 
Hist. Gen. de las Indias, cap. xxviii.) 
Arbor folia fert similia Lauri foliis, Marcgrave, Hist. Nat. Bras. 
lib. iii. cap. ix. (cum icone). 
Des Prunes de Icaques. “Ce fruit est fort dous, & tellement 
aimé de certains Sauvages, qui demuerent pres du Golfe d’Hon- 
dures, qu’on les appelle Icaques, 2 cause de l’état qu’ils font de ces 
Prunes, qui leur servent de nourriture.” (Rochefort, Hist. Nat. et 
Morale des Antilles, 74 [cum icone].) 
Prunier @Icaque. “Tl y en a de plusieurs especes, qu’on distingue 
seulement par la couleur du fruit, dont les uns sont rouges, les autres 
violets, les autres blancs, mais tous de méme forme, méme chair, © 
méme gotit, méme vertu.” (Labat, Nouveau Voyage aux Isles de 
PAmérique, iii. 40.) 
Frutex cotini fere folio crasso in summitate deliquium patiente, fructu 
ovali ceeruleo ossiculum angulosum continente, Catesby, Nat. Hist. Car. 
1, 25, §. 25. 
Chrysobalanus, Linneeus, Hort. Cliff. 484 (excl. syn.).— Plumier, 
Pl. Am. ed. Burmann, 151, t. 158. 
The Fat Pork-Tree, Griffith Hughes, Nat. Hist. Barbados, 180. 
Chrysobalanus fruticosus, foliis orbiculatis alternis, floribus laxe 
racemosis, Browne, Nat. Hist. Jam. 250, t. 17, f. 5. 
Icaquier, Nicolson, Essai sur V Histoire Naturelle de UIsle de Saint- 
Domingue, 248. 
Chrysobalanus seu Icaco, fructu nigro, fructu albo, fructu violaceo, 
Pouppé Desportes, Histoire des Maladies de S. Domingue, iii. 244. 
* Spons, Encyclopedia of the Industrial Arts, Manufactures, and 
Raw Commercial Products, ii. 1414, — Tussac, Fl. Antill. iv, 92. 
