POLYGONACE. SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 119 
COCCOLOBIS LAURIFOLIA. 
Pigeon Plum. 
Fascicues of flowers in terminal racemes. Leaves ovate or ovate-lanceolate. 
Coccolobis laurifolia, Jacquin, Hort. Schenbr. iii. 9, t. Coccolobis parvifolia, Nuttall, Sylva, iii. 25, t. 89 (not 
267 (1798). — Poiret, Lam. Dict. Suppl. iv. 652. — Meis- Poiret) (1849). 
ner, Mon. Gen. Polyg. Prodr. 33, t.2,C; De Candolle Coccolobis tenuifolia, Eggers, Vidensk. Medd. fra nat. 
Prodr. xiv. 165.— Spach, Hist. Vég. x. 543. — Eggers, For. Kjébenh. 1876, 142 (Fl. St. Croix) (not Linnzus). 
Bull. U. S. Nat. Mus. No. 18, 88 (Fl. St. Croix and Coccolobis Leoganensis, Eggers, Vidensk. Medd. fra nat. 
the Virgin Islands). — Lindau, Bot. Jahrb. xiii. 158. — For, Kjébenh. 1876, 142 (Fl. St. Croix) (not Jacquin). — 
Baillon, Hist. Pl. xi. f. 445. — Hitchcock, Rep. Missouri Bull. U. S. Nat. Mus. No. 18, 88 (#1. St. Croix and the 
Bot. Gard. iv. 123. Virgin Islands). 
Coccolobis Floridana, Meisner, De Candolle Prodr. xiv. Coccolobis Curtissii, Lindau, Bot. Jahrb. xiii. 159 (1891). 
165 (1857). — Grisebach, Cat. Pl. Cub. 61.—Chapman, Uvifera Curtissii, Otto Kunze, Rev. Gen. Pl. ii. 561 
Fl. 392. — Porcher, Resources of Southern Fields and (1891). 
Forests, 376. — Sargent, Forest Trees N. Am. 10th Census Uvifera laurifolia, Otto Kunze, Rev. Gen. Pl. ii. 561 
U. S. ix. 117. (1891). 
A glabrous tree, in Florida sixty to seventy feet in height, with a tall straight trunk one or two 
feet in diameter, and spreading branches which form a dense round-topped handsome head. The bark 
of the trunk is a sixteenth of an inch thick, gray tinged with red and brown, and broken on the 
surface into large smooth plates, which in falling display the dark purple inner bark. The branchlets 
are slender, terete, often slightly zigzag, usually contorted, and covered with light orange-colored bark, 
which in their second or third year becomes dark gray tinged with red. The leaves are ovate, ovate- 
lanceolate or obovate-oblong, rounded or acute at the apex, rounded or wedge-shaped at the base, and 
entire, with slightly undulate revolute margins; they are thick and firm, bright green on the upper 
surface, paler on the lower surface, three to four inches long and an inch and a half to two inches 
broad, with conspicuous pale midribs rounded on the upper side, and three or four pairs of remote 
oblique primary veins forked and arcuate near the margins and connected by prominent reticulate 
veinlets; they are borne on stout flattened grooved petioles half an inch long and abruptly enlarged 
at the base; the stipular sheaths are truncate, entire, ight brown, glabrous, thin and scarious, and 
about half an inch wide. The flowers appear in early sprmg in few or one-flowered fascicles in simple 
racemes terminal on short axillary branches of the previous year and two to three inches long; they 
are borne on slender pedicels a quarter of an inch long and much longer than the minute acute bracts 
and the narrow light brown scarious sheaths. The calyx is campanulate, narrowed at the base, and an 
eighth of an inch across the expanded lobes, which are cup-shaped, thin, and rather shorter than the 
stamens composed of slender yellow filaments enlarged at the base and of dark orange-colored anthers. 
The ovary is abruptly contracted into an abbreviated style, divided into three elongated stigmatic 
lobes. The fruit, which ripens durmg the winter and early spring, is ovoid, narrowed at the base, 
rounded and crowned at the apex with the lobes of the calyx, dark red and a third of an inch long, 
with thin acidulous flesh and a hard thin-walled light brown nutlet. 
In Florida, where it is one of the largest and most abundant of the tropical trees, the Pigeon 
Plum is found on the seacoast from Cape Canaveral to the southern keys, and on the west coast from 
Cape Romano to Cape Sable. It is common on the Bahama Islands, and inhabits many of the Antilles 
and Venezuela. 
The wood of Coccolobis laurifolia is heavy, exceedingly hard, strong, brittle, and close-grained, 
