Laguncularia racemosa (L.) C. F. Gaertn.

• Title

  Laguncularia racemosa (L.) C. F. Gaertn.

• Authors

  Nathaniel Lord Britton, Frances W. Horne

• Scientific Name

  Laguncularia racemosa (L.) C.F.Gaertn.

• Description

  Flora Borinqueña Laguncularia racemosa White Mangrove Mangle blanco Family Terminaliaceae White Mangrove Family Conocarpus racemosus Linnaeus, Systema Naturae, Edition 10, 930. 1759. Laguncularia racemosa Gaertner, De Fructibus et Seminibus Plantarum 3: 200. 1805. Restricted in habitat to salt-water swamps, because they are unable to exist elsewhere, the trees called Mangroves have a highly specialized existence, and are very widely distributed, in coastal tropical regions, forming the well-known Mangrove Swamps. In America there are four different trees concerned, and sometimes they all may be seen in the same swamp; the White Mangrove is common in those of Porto Rico, usually low, or shrubby, but, exceptionally, trees up to 20 meters in height have been observed; it ranges north into southern Florida, and is recorded as also found in tropical Africa. Its bark is astringent, and has been used for tanning, and also in medicine; the yellowish-brown wood is hard, dense and strong. Laguncularia (Latin, from the fancied resemblance of the fruit to a little flask), is a genus first botanically defined by Gaertner in 1805; the name Horan, was used for it, however, by Adanson, in 1763, but incompletely published; it consists of only the species here illustrated and another one native of tropical Africa. The specific name racemosa, applied to it by Linnaeus, refers to its flower-clusters, which are long and slender, but in modern Botany are designated spikes, rather than racemes, because the individual flowers are not definitely stalked. Laguncularia racemosa has stalked, opposite, broad, smooth, dull, leaves from 2 to 7 centimeters long, rounded or notched at the top, their stalks bearing 2 small glands. The twigs are smooth, stout, and swollen at the nodes. The small, greenish flowers are clustered, in slender spikes from 3 to 6 centimeters long; the calyx-tube is 5-lobed, attached to the ovary, finely hairy, its lobes rounded, and there are 5, minute petals, orbicular in form; the 10, short stamens have slender filaments and heart-shaped anthers; the ovary contains 2 ovules, the style is short, the stigma 2-lobed. The fruit is oblong, sometimes broadest above the middle, reddish, leathery, ribbed or angled, from 1.5 to 2 centimeters long, constricted below the persistent calyx-lobes, thus resembling a flask.