Nyssa with six species is confined to the eastern United States and to southern and eastern Asia, where one species is distributed from the eastern Himalayas to the island of Java and another occurs in central and western China. The American species produce tough wood, with intricately contorted and twisted grain.
Nyssa, the name of a nymph, was given to this genus from the fact that one of the species grows in water.
CONSPECTUS OF THE NORTH AMERICAN SPECIES.
Pistillate flowers in 2 or few-flowered clusters, their calyx disciform; fruit blue, not more than ⅔′ long; stone with broad rounded ribs. Stone indistinctly ribbed; leaves linear-oblong to oval or obovate.1. [N. sylvatica] (A, C). Stone prominently ribbed; leaves oblanceolate to oblong or elliptic.2. [N. biflora] (C). Pistillate flowers solitary, their calyx cup-shaped; fruit 1′ or more long. Fruit red; stone with prominent wings; leaves oblong-oval or obovate, usually obtuse at apex.3. [N. ogeche] (C). Fruit purple; stone with acute ridges; leaves oval or oblong, acute or acuminate at apex.4. [N. aquatica] (A, C).
1. [Nyssa sylvatica] Marsh. Tupelo. Pepperidge. Sour Gum.
Leaves crowded at the end of lateral branchlets or remote on vigorous shoots, linear-oblong, lanceolate, oval or obovate, acute or acuminate or sometimes contracted into a short broad point at apex, cuneate or occasionally rounded at base, entire, with slightly thickened margins, or rarely coarsely dentate, coated when they unfold with rufous tomentum, especially on the lower surface, or pubescent or sometimes nearly glabrous, and at maturity thick and firm, dark green and lustrous above, pale and often villose below, principally along the broad midrib and on the primary veins, 2′—5′ long and ½′—3′ wide; turning early in autumn bright scarlet on the upper surface only; petioles slender or stout, terete or wing-margined, ciliate, ¼′—1½′ in length, and often bright red. Flowers appearing in early spring when the leaves are about one third grown on slender pubescent or tomentose peduncles ½′—1½′ long, staminate in many-flowered dense or lax compound heads, pistillate in 2 to several-flowered clusters, sessile in the axils of conspicuous often foliaceous bracts, and furnished with 2 smaller acute hairy bractlets; calyx of the staminate flower disciform; petals thick, ovate-oblong, acute, rounded at apex, erect or slightly spreading, early deciduous; stamens exserted in the staminate flower, shorter than the petals in the pistillate flower; stigma stout, exserted, reflexed above the middle, 0 in the staminate flower. Fruit ripening in October, 1—3 from each flower-cluster, ovoid, ⅓′—⅔′ long, dark blue, with thin acrid flesh; stone light brown, ovoid, rounded at base, pointed at apex, terete or more or less flattened, and 10—12-ribbed, with narrow indistinct pale ribs rounded on the back.
A tree, with thick hard roots and few rootlets, often surrounded by root-sprouts, occasionally 100° or rarely 125° high, with a trunk sometimes 5° in diameter, numerous slender pendulous tough flexible branches forming a head sometimes short, cylindric and flat-topped, sometimes low and broad, or on trees crowded in the forest narrow, pyramidal or conic, and sometimes inversely conic and broad and flat at the top, and branchlets when they first appear light green to orange color, and in their first winter nearly glabrous or pale or rufous-pubescent, light red-brown marked by minute scattered pale lenticels and by small lunate leaf-scars displaying the ends of 3 conspicuous groups of fibro-vascular bundles, later becoming darker and developing short stout spur-like lateral branchlets; generally in the northern and extreme southern states much smaller, and rarely more than 50°-60° tall. Winter-buds obtuse, ¼′ long, with ovate acute apiculate dark red puberulous imbricated scales, those of the inner ranks accrescent, bright-colored at maturity, and marking the base of the branchlet with obscure ring-like scars. Bark of the trunk ¾′—1½′ thick, light brown often tinged with red, and deeply fissured, the surface of the ridges covered with small irregularly shaped scales. Wood heavy, soft, strong, very tough, not durable, light yellow or nearly white, with thick lighter colored sapwood of 80—100 layers of annual growth; used for the hubs of wheels, rollers in glass factories, ox-yokes, wharf-piles, and sometimes for the soles of shoes.
Distribution. Borders of swamps in wet imperfectly drained soil, and often especially southward on high wooded mountain slopes; valley of the Kennebec River, Maine, to southern Ontario, central Michigan, southeastern Missouri and eastern Oklahoma, and southward to northern Florida, and to the valley of the Brazos River, Texas; of its largest size on the southern Appalachian Mountains.
Occasionally cultivated as an ornamental tree in the eastern states, but difficult to transplant except when very young. The first tree in the eastern states to assume autumn colors of the leaves.