To lure tourists to the West Indies, the makers of travel literature are most apt to use for illustrations more or less accurate drawings of the coconut palm, as being the most easily recognisable and distinctive tree of these islands. Not so well-known, but quite as characteristic of their sandy beaches, and probably even more abundant, is the sea-grape with its stiff, erect shoots, its large, stiff, rounded leaves, and the gnarled and wind-distorted trunks of the older trees.