KOSACE^E 



583 



tuse, with dark red scales. Bark of the trunk \'-\' thick and dark reddish brown. Wood 

 heavy, hard, very close-grained, pale reddish brown, with hardly distinguishable sapwood. 

 Distribution. Islands of southern California, in all situations from the fertile valleys 

 and canons at the water's edge up to altitudes of 3000 on the dry interior ridges; hi Lower 

 California. 



11. CHRYSOBALANUS L. 



Trees or shrubs, with stout branchlets covered with pale lenticels, and fibrous roots. 

 Leaves alternate, entire, coriaceous, short-petiolate, persistent; stipules minute, deciduous. 

 Flowers perfect, short-pedicellate, small, creamy white, in axillary or terminal dichoto- 

 mously branched slender canescent cymes, with conspicuous deciduous bracts; calyx turbi- 

 nate-campanulate, 5-lobed, the lobes imbricated in the bud, without bracts, deciduous; 

 disk thin, adnate to the calyx-tube; petals 5, alternate with the lobes of the calyx, spatulate, 

 deciduous; stamens (in the arborescent species) indefinite in a single continuous series, in- 

 serted with the petals on the margin of the disk; filaments filiform, hairy, free or slightly 

 united at base; anthers ovoid, ovary sessile in the bottom of the calyx-tube, pubescent or 

 glabrous, 1-celled; style rising from the base of the ovary, filiform, terminated by a minute 

 truncate stigma ; ovules 2, collateral, ascending; raphe dorsal ; the micropyle inferior. Fruit 

 a fleshy 1-seeded drupe with pulpy flesh, a coriaceous or crustaceous stone 5 or 6-angled 

 toward the base and imperfectly 5 or 6-valved, the valves reticulate- veined. Seed erect: 

 seed-coat chartaceous, light brown; embryo filling the cavity of the seed; cotyledons thick 

 and fleshy; radicle inferior, very short. 



Chrysobalanus is represented in the south Atlantic states by a shrubby species confined 

 to the coast region from Georgia to Alabama, and by an arborescent species, an inhabitant 

 of the shores of southern Florida, and widely distributed through the maritime regions of 

 tropical America, and found in various forms on the coast of western tropical Africa. The 

 insipid fruit of the arborescent species is eaten by negroes; the seeds contain a considerable 

 quantity of oil; and the astringent bark, leaves and roots have been used in medicine. 



The generic name is from xP Vff ^ and ftd\avos, in allusion to the supposed golden fruit of 

 one of the species. 



1. Chrysobalanus icacoL. Cocoa Plum. 

 Leaves broad-elliptic or round-obovate, rounded or slightly emarginate at apex, cuceate 



Fig. 536 



at base, glabrous, coriaceous, obscurely reticulate-veined, dark green and lustrous on the 

 upper surface, light yellow-green on the lower surface, l'-3^' long and l'-2' wide, with a 



