buttonwood

plural buttonwoods

1. The common name given to at least three species of shrub or tree.
   1. The mangrove tree (Conocarpus erectus, family Combretaceae) a tropical and subtropical species.

      On the opposite bank was a fresh ’gator wallow. The mud had been packed smooth where they turned and rolled their hard bodies. Penny dropped to his haunches behind a buttonwood bush.

      1938, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, chapter 24, in The Yearling, New York: Grosset & Dunlap, page 303

   2. The American sycamore or American plane tree (Platanus occidentalis, family Platanaceae).

      2 more examples

      1824, Washington Irving (as Geoffrey Crayon), “Wolfert Webber, or Golden Dreams” in Tales of a Traveller, Volume 2, Part 4, Philadelphia: H.C. Carey & I. Lea, p. 55, Thus quietly and comfortably did this excellent family vegetate under the shade of a mighty buttonwood tree, which by little and little grew so great as entirely to overshadow their palace.

      1835, Fanny Kemble, Journal of a Residence in America, Paris: A. and W. Galignani, entry dated Sunday, 13 January, 1833, p. 234, When near, the trees look singularly deplorable and untidy, although at the distance, the red-brown of the faded oaks mingling with the bright, vivid, green cedars, and here and there a silver-barked buttonwood tree raising its white delicate branches from among them, produce a very agreeable and harmonious blending to the eye.

   3. California sycamore or western sycamore (Platanus racemosa).