BUTTON-TREE. 
115 
each end, very smooth, and on short petioles, which have 
frequently two glands at the base. The flowers, for 
which butterflies have a great predilection, are very 
inconspicuous, greenish-yellow, small, and collected into 
globose heads, in axillary and terminal few-flowered 
panicles on pedicels about the length of the capituli. 
The heads at length become reddish; the capsules 
are small and scale-like, corky, dilated elliptic, internally 
concave, with broad, thin, carinated margins, and are 
very often abortive, never more than 1 -seeded, and 
pubescent at the summit. 
The island of Cuba affords another allied but very 
distinct species, which may be the C. procwnbens of 
Jacquin, put down as a variety of the present by 
Decandolle; the calyx, however, is almost entirely 
smooth, with very acute segments, and the leaves are 
sharply apiculated, and sometimes obtuse with a short 
point. In this the wood appears to be very hard and as 
close-grained as Mahogany, of a dull white, inclining to 
grey, with a delicate feathered appearance, and a thick 
bark, grey externally and blackish within. 
According to Prince Maximilian, the bark of the 
Conocarpus racemosa (one of the plants called Mangrove 
in Brazil) is much used at Rio Janeiro for tanning. 
Plate XXXIII. 
A branch of the natural size, a . The flower, b. The fruit, 
of the natural size. c. The same magnified. 
