Based on a Saint-Domingue's eight-bar folk tune titled Chanson de Lizette, the Creole melody Ou som souroucou and either Louisiana's Ma mourri or Martinique's Tant sirop est doux, its title refers to the manchineel, a tree from the tropics which grows poisonous small apple-like fruits. It can't be burned for the smoke might cause blindness and one standing beneath its branches during a rainfall might have the skin blistered by its sap.[2] It's a composition certainly based on a poem of the same name by Charles Hubert Millevoye.[2]
Although Gottschalk called the piece a "serenade", it was written as a ballad in the ABA form.[4] With 238 bars and a 92 bpm Andante tempo marked as malinconico, it has a 2
2 time signature. The introductory melody is established under a staccato accompaniment on the left hand with the middle section marked by the contrasts of the staccato rhythm of left hand over the melodic phrases of the right, followed by a series of modulations. The third motif in B-flat comes with a fortissimo shift of the melody, followed by a long coda with light variations in triplets in the final bars.[2]
