STYRACER. SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 15 
SYMPLOCOS TINCTORIA. 
Sweet Leaf. Horse Sugar. 
FLOWERS in many-flowered axillary fascicles; corolla divided nearly to the base ; 
stamens united in five clusters; ovary 38-celled, with a pair of ovules in each cell. 
Fruit drupaceous, 1-seeded. 
Symplocos tinctoria, L’Héritier, Trans. Linn. Soc. i. 176 soon, Syn. ii. 72. — Desfontaines, Hist. Ard. i. 217. — 
(1791). — Willdenow, Spec. iii. 1436. — Sprengel, Syst. 
ili. 339. — Don, Gen. Syst. iv. 2.— A. de Candolle, 
Prodr. viii. 254. — Chapman, Fl. 272. — Curtis, Rep. 
Geolog. Surv. N. Car. 1860, iii. 65. — Gray, Syn. Fl. N. 
Am. ii. pt. i. 70.— Sargent, Forest Trees, N. Am. 10th 
Census, U. S. ix. 105. — Watson & Coulter, Gray’s Man. 
Du Mont de Courset, Bot. Cult. ed. 2, iii. 320. — Geert- 
ner f. Fruct. iii. 140, t. 209. — Robin, Voyages, iii. 419. — 
Michaux f. Hist. Arb. Am. iii. 61, t. 9. — Pursh, FV. 
Am. Sept. ii. 451. — Nuttall, Gen. ii. 83. — Elliott, Sh. 
ii. 173. — Spach, Hist. Vég. ix. 420. 
Protohopea tinctoria, Miers, Jour. Linn. Soc. xvii. 290 
ed. 6, 335. (1879). 
Hopea tinctoria, Linneus, Mant. 105 (1767). — Walter, Eugenioides tinctorium, Otto Kunze, Rev. Gen. Pl. ii. 
Fl. Car. 189. — Michaux, Fl. Bor.-Am. ii. 42. — Per- 976 (1891). 
A tree, occasionally thirty to thirty-five feet in height, with a short trunk rarely exceeding six or 
eight mches in diameter, and slender upright branches which form an open head; or more often a 
shrub. The bark of the trunk varies from a third to half an inch in thickness, and is ashy gray, 
slightly tinged with red, divided by occasional narrow fissures, and roughened with wart-like excres- 
cences. The branchlets are terete, stout, and pithy, and when they first appear are light green, and 
coated with rufous or pale tomentum, or are sometimes glabrous or covered with scattered white hairs ; 
they are 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, and becoming 
roughened with occasional small elevated lenticels. The winter-buds are ovate, acute, and covered with 
broadly ovate, nearly triangular acute scales; those of the inner rows are accrescent on the young 
shoots, and at maturity are oblong, obovate, rounded, and often apiculate at the apex, light green, 
glabrous or pilose, ciliate on the margins, and often half an inch long. The leaves are revolute in 
vernation, oblong, acute or acuminate at the apex, gradually narrowed at the base, obscurely crenulate- 
serrate with remote teeth, or sometimes nearly entire; when they unfold they are coated with pale 
tomentum on the lower surface, glabrous or tomentose on the upper, and furnished on the margins with 
minute dark caducous glands ; at maturity they are subcoriaceous, dark green and lustrous above, paler 
and pubescent below, five or six inches long, one to two inches wide, with broad midribs rounded and 
sometimes puberulous on the upper side, inconspicuous arcuate veins and reticulate veinlets ; they are 
borne on stout slightly winged petioles from a third to half an inch long, and late in the autumn fall 
from plants growing in the northern part of the region occupied by this species and at high elevations 
above the level of the ocean, or in the southern Atlantic and Gulf states remaining on the branches 
until after the flowers of the following spring have opened and the branchlets have begun to grow. 
The fragrant flowers, which appear from the first of March at the south to the middle of May on the 
mountains of the Carolinas, are produced in nearly sessile many-flowered clusters in the axils of leaves of 
the previous year, on short pedicels enlarged into thick hemispherical receptacles covered with long white 
hairs. The flower-clusters are inclosed in the bud by ovate acute orange-colored scales brown and 
ciliate on the margins, and each of the globose flower-buds is surrounded by three imbricated oblong 
bracts rounded or pointed at the apex and ciliate on the margins, the longest being as long as the calyx 
