766 TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 



Fig. 687 



with orange, with thick clear pale yellow sapwood of 30-40 layers of annual growth. The 

 bark has been used in tanning leather. 



Distribution. Florida, only on Elliott's Key; widely distributed in brackish marshes 

 through the West Indies to the shores of the Caribbean Sea and the Bay of Panama. 



2. CONOCARPUS L. 



A tree or shrub, with angled branchlets. Leaves alternate, short-petiolate, narrow- 

 ovate or obovate, acute, gradually contracted and biglandular at base, glabrous or seri- 

 ceous. Flowers perfect, minute, in dense capitate heads in narrow leafy terminal panicles, 

 with acute caducous bracts and bractlets coated with pale hairs, on stout hoary-tomentose 

 peduncles bibracteolate near the middle; calyx-tube truncate, obliquely compressed at 

 base, clothed with pale hairs, the limb campanulate, parted to the middle, the lobes ovate, 

 acute, erect, pubescent on the outer and puberulous on the inner surface, deciduous; petals 

 0; disk 5-lobed, hairy; stamens usually 5, inserted in 1 rank, or rarely 7 or 8 in 2 ranks; 

 anthers cordate, minute; style thickened and villose at base. Fruits scale-like, broad- 

 obovoid, pointed, recurved, and covered at apex with short pale hairs, densely imbricated 

 in ovoid reddish heads; flesh coriaceous, corky, produced into broad lateral wings; stone 

 thin-walled, crustaceous, inseparable from the flesh. Seed irregularly ovoid; seed-coat 

 membranaceous, pale chestnut-brown. 



The genus consists of a single species of tropical America and Africa. 



The generic name, from X^POS and Kapwbs, is in allusion to the cone-like shape of the 

 heads of fruits. 



1. Conocarpus erecta L. Buttonwood. 



Leaves slightly puberulous on the lower surface when they first appear or coated with 

 pale silky persistent pubescence (var. sericea, DC.), 2'-4' long, ^'-1|' wide, lustrous, dark 

 green or pale on the upper surface, paler on the lower surface, with a broad orange-colored 

 midrib, obscure primary veins, and reticulate veinlets; petioles stout, broad, |' in length. 

 Flowers produced throughout the year, in heads i' in diameter on peduncles \'-\\' in 

 length, in panicles 6'-12' long. Cone of fruit about 1' in diameter. 



A tree, 40-60 high, with a trunk 20'-30' in diameter, small branches forming a narrow 

 regular head, and slender branchlets conspicuously winged, light red-brown, usually gla- 

 brous, or silky pubescent (var. sericea, DC.), becoming terete and marked by large orbicu- 

 lar leaf-scars in their second year; or sometimes a low shrub, with semiprostrate stems. 

 Bark of the trunk dark brown, divided by irregular reticulating fissures into broad flat 

 ridges broken on the surface into small thin appressed scales. Wood very heavy, hard, 



