1. SYMPLOCOS L’Her.
Characters of the family.
Symplocos with nearly three hundred species inhabits chiefly the warmer parts of America, Asia, and Australia, one species occurring in the southern United States.
Symplocos contains a yellow coloring matter, and the bark and leaves of some species have medical properties.
The generic name, from Σύμπλοκος, relates to the union of the filaments of some of the species.
1. [Symplocos tinctoria] L’Her. Sweet Leaf. Horse Sugar.
Leaves revolute in the bud, oblong, acute or acuminate at apex, gradually narrowed at base, obscurely crenulate-serrate with remote teeth, or sometimes nearly entire, coated below when they unfold with pale tomentum, glabrous or tomentose above, and furnished on the margins with minute dark caducous glands, and at maturity subcoriaceous, dark green and lustrous on the upper surface, paler and pubescent on the lower surface, 5′—6′ long and 1′—2′ wide, with a broad midrib rounded and sometimes puberulous on the upper side, inconspicuous arcuate veins and reticulate veinlets; northward and at high altitudes falling in the autumn, and southward remaining on the branches until after the opening of the flowers the following spring; petioles stout, slightly winged, ⅓′—½′ in length. Flowers: flower-clusters inclosed in the bud by ovate acute orange-colored scales brown and ciliate on the margins, each of the flower-buds surrounded by 3 imbricated oblong bracts rounded or pointed at apex and ciliate on the margins, the longest as long as the calyx and one third longer than the 2 lateral bracts; flowers fragrant, opening from the 1st of March at the south to the middle of May on the southern Appalachian Mountains, on short pedicels enlarged into thick hemispheric receptacles covered with long white hairs, in nearly sessile many-flowered clusters in the axils of leaves of the previous year; calyx oblong, cup-shaped, dark green and puberulous, with minute ovate scarious lobes rounded at apex; corolla creamy white, ¼′ long, with rounded lobes; stamens exserted, with slender filaments united at base into 5 clusters, and orange-colored anthers; ovary 3-celled, furnished on the top with 5 dark nectariferous glands placed opposite the lobes of the calyx, and abruptly contracted into a slender style gradually thickened toward the apex and longer than the corolla. Fruit ripening in the summer or early autumn, ovoid, ¼′ long, dark orange-colored or brown; seed ovoid, pointed, with a thin papery chestnut-brown coat.
A tree, occasionally 30°—35° high, with a short trunk barely exceeding 6′-8′ in diameter, slender upright branches forming an open head, and stout terete pithy branchlets light green and coated with pale or rufous tomentum when they first appear, or sometimes glabrous, and covered with scattered white hairs, reddish brown to ashy gray, tinged with red and usually more or less pubescent or often covered with a glaucous bloom during their first and second years, later growing darker, roughened by occasional small elevated lenticels and marked by the low horizontal obcordate leaf-scars displaying a central cluster of large fibro-vascular bundle-scars; or more often a shrub. Winter-buds ovoid, acute, covered with broad-ovate nearly triangular acute scales, those of the inner rows accrescent on the young branchlets, and at maturity oblong-obovate, rounded and often apiculate at apex, light green, glabrous or pilose, ciliate on the margins, and often ½′ in length. Bark of the trunk ⅓′—½′ thick, ashy gray slightly tinged with red, divided by occasional narrow fissures and roughened by wart-like excrescences. Wood light, soft, close-grained, light red or brown, with thick lighter colored often nearly white sapwood of 18—20 layers of annual growth. The leaves are sweet to the taste and are devoured in the autumn by cattle and horses, and, like the bark, yield a yellow dye occasionally used domestically. The bitter aromatic roots have been used as a tonic.
Distribution. Moist rich soil, often in the shade of dense forests; peninsula of Delaware to northern Florida and from the coast to altitudes of nearly 4000° on the Blue Ridge in North and South Carolina, and to eastern Texas and southern Arkansas; in the Gulf states usually along the borders of Cypress-swamps.