Chrysobalanus icaco (Coco Plum)

Chrysobalanus icaco (Coco Plum) is a medium-sized, slow-growing, creeping, or erect evergreen shrub or, rarely, a small tree with multiple smooth to scaly brown or gray stems. Its dense foliage forms a rounded crown. The leaves are alternate, simple, and round. Emerging yellow-green or red-tinged, they become leathery, smooth, glossy, dark-green above and a paler, matte green beneath as they age. In late winter to late summer, with a peak in spring, inconspicuous tiny flowers appear in short, axillary, terminal clusters. They are followed from late spring through summer by a heavy crop of thin-skin, green, plum-like fruit (drupes) turning brownish purple and then black as they ripen. Soft and edible, they have an almost tasteless to mildly sweet flavor and are sometimes used for jams and jellies. Coco Plum provides significant food and cover for wildlife. The flowers attract butterflies, bees, beetles, and wasp pollinators. The fruit is devoured by squirrels, gopher tortoises, and other wildlife. The nectar from the flowers produces a dark-colored honey. Native to Florida, the Caribbean, and Central and South America, Coco Plum is found growing in swamps, moist forests, and coastal beaches and thickets. Coco Plum makes an excellent landscape plant and is widely cultivated in parts of Florida that are not prone to hard freezes. It can be used as an informal hedge, specimen plant or groundcover.

• Grows up to 10-30 ft. tall (3-9 m) and 10-20 ft. wide (3-6 m).
• Performs best in full sun or light shade in clay to sandy, well-drained soils. Tolerates seasonally saturated to seasonally dry soils. Tolerant of inundation with brackish water, it is somewhat tolerant to salty wind but not direct salt spray. Moderately drought tolerant.
• No serious pest or disease issues. Keep an eye out for lobate lac scale, weevils, algal leaf spots, Botryosphaeria canker.
• Hedges should be pruned up to 3 times a year to keep them in shape. Bushy shrubs may be pruned into small, multi-trunked trees.
• Propagate by seed (slow) or by cuttings. Cuttings will root quicker if started in the spring from non-flowering and non-fruiting stems.
• Native to central and south Florida, West Indies, Mexico, Central America, northern South America, West Africa.