Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Buttressed trees up to 36 m tall.

Stems: Bark gray to almost black, roughly fissured, usually with large corky lenticels on the buttresses.

Roots: Buttressed knee roots.

Leaves: Leaves simple. Opposite, decussate. Blades elliptic–oblong, 8.5–22 cm long, (4.5–)5–7(–9) cm wide. Surfaces glabrous; lower surfaces black–dotted; blades usually coriaceous. Margins entire. Petioles often reddish, 2–4.5 cm long. Stipules conspicuous, often reddish, lanceolate, ca. 4 cm long, interpetiolar, sheathing in the terminal bud, caducous.

Flowers: Flowers 1–5 in pedunculate cymes, articulated at base with the pedicel. Flowers bisexual (perfect), usually nodding. Calyx orange to yellowish red, (10–)12–14(–16)lobed, 30–35 mm long, the lobes subulate–lanceolate, valvate. Petals alternate with the sepals, distinct, entire, 13–15 mm long, each with 3–4 bristles 2–3 mm long at apex, outer margins fringed with white silky hairs, especially toward base, petals each embracing a pair of stamens, caducous. Stamens twice as many as petals, paired; anthers tetrathecal, linear, opening by longitudinal slits. Ovary inferior, adnate to lower part of calyx tube, 2–4-celled, placentation apical-axile; ovules 2 per cell, pendulous; style filiform; stigma obscurely 2–4 lobed, terminal.

Fruit: Fruit 2–2.5 cm long; not ribbed; included and adnate to calyx tube. Seeds 1(2); endosperm well–developed; fleshy and oily; hypocotyl cigar–shaped; slightly angled; 15–25 cm long; apex blunt; falling with the fruit.

Ploidy: 2n = 36

Habitat: Saltwater marshes.

Elevation Range: