CHAPTER IX 



miscellaneous plants (continued) 



Coccoloba uvifera, L. (Seaside Grape) 



This is one of the most familiar of the trees growing by the sea- 

 shore in the West Indies. It is able to adapt itself to a variety 

 of stations at the coast. Thus, it often grows among the trees and 

 shrubs lining the sandy beach, when it is associated with Chrysoba- 

 lanus icaco, Ecastaphyllum brownei, Guilandina bonducella, Suriana 

 maritima, Thespesia populnea, etc. But it is almost as much at home 

 on a low, rocky coast in the company of the Seven-year Apple (Genipa 

 clusiifolia), and may not infrequently be found in the mangrove- 

 border association, growing either with Conocarpus erecius on the 

 flanks of the Laguncularia fringe or with Avicennia on the mud-flats 

 bordering salt-water lagoons. Where low, sandy plains lie behind 

 the beaches, it may extend some distance inland. 



It belongs to a genus peculiar to the tropics of the New World 

 and holding a large number of species, 140 and more, that find their 

 principal station in the mountain forests and on the open-wooded 

 plains of the West Indies, Central America, and tropical South 

 America. This shore tree, which varies greatly in size, is spread 

 over the West Indian region, ranging from South Florida and the 

 Bahamas to Trinidad, and extends along the eastern borders of the 

 continent from Central America to Venezuela, the Guianas, and Brazil. 

 It grows in the Bermudas, and, although it now behaves as an in- 

 digenous plant on the sandy and rocky coasts (Harshberger, p. 703), 

 it was marked in a list of plants furnished by the Hon. J. H. Darrell 

 about forty years ago to the Governor, Sir J. H. Lefroy, as from the 

 West Indies (Hemsley in Chall. BoL, I., 61). Unlike many other West 

 Indian littoral trees and shrubs it has not been recorded, as far as 

 I know, either from the Pacific coasts of America or from the West 

 Coast of Africa. Fawcett and Rendle, the most recent authorities, 

 restrict it to the eastern side of the New World, and I may add that 

 when examining the shore vegetation on both sides of the Panama 

 Isthmus, I noticed it only on the north side, as at Colon. 



As a rule where the plant grows it is found in abundance. In the 

 West Indies I studied it as a shore tree at St. Croix, in numerous 

 places around the coasts of Jamaica, in the Turks Islands, on Grenada 

 and on Tobago. It was observed by Millspaugh in the Cayman 

 Islands (Plantce Utowance), and its occurrence there is suggestive; 



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