16 SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. STYRACES. 
and a third longer than the two lateral bracts. The calyx is oblong, cup-shaped, dark green and puberu- 
lous, with minute ovate scarious lobes rounded at the apex. The corolla is creamy white, a quarter of 
an inch long, and divided nearly to the base into five lobes rounded at the apex. The stamens with 
slender filiform filaments united at the base into five clusters, and orange-colored anthers, are exserted. 
The three-celled ovary is furnished on the top with five dark nectariferous glands placed opposite the 
lobes of the calyx, and is abruptly contracted into a slender style, gradually thickened towards the apex, 
and longer than the corolla. The fruit ripens in the summer or early autumn, and is an ovate nut-like 
drupe, a third of an inch long, dark orange-colored or brown, tipped with the persistent calyx-lobes and 
the remnants of the style, and consists of a thin dry outer covermg and a thick-walled bony stone 
containing a single ovate pointed seed covered with a thin papery chestnut-brown coat. 
On the Atlantic seaboard Symplocos tinctoria is found from the Delaware peninsula to northern 
Florida, and from the coast to the Blue Ridge, on which it ascends, in the Carolinas, to an elevation of 
nearly three thousand feet ; and through the Gulf states ranges west to western Louisiana and southern 
It is an inhabitant of moist rich soil in the shade of dense forests, or in the Gulf states 
often occupies the borders of Cypress swamps. 
The wood of Symplocos tinctoria is light, soft, and close-grained, and contains numerous thin 
medullary rays; it is light red or brown, with thick lighter colored, often nearly white sapwood, 
composed. of eighteen or twenty layers of annual growth. The specific gravity of the absolutely dry 
wood is 0.5325, a cubic foot weighing 33.19 pounds. 
The leaves, which are sweet to the taste, are devoured in the autumn by cattle and horses, and, 
like the bark, yield a yellow dye, occasionally used domestically... The bitter and aromatic roots have 
been used as a tonic.” 
Symplocos tinctoria appears to have been discovered by Mark Catesby* in the coast region of 
South Carolina, and the first description and figure of this plant is found in his Natural History of 
Carolina,‘ published in 1731. In England the Sweet Leaf was cultivated before 1780 by Dr. Fother- 
gill® in his garden at Upton House, near Stratford in Essex.’ It is probably no longer cultivated 
Arkansas. 
except in a few botanic gardens. 
1 Porcher, Resources of Southern Fields and Forests, 388. 
2 Griffith, Med. Bot. 437. 
® Mark Catesby (1679 or 1680-1749), a native of Sudworth in 
Suffolk, appears to have developed early in life a love of natural 
history, which induced him in 1712 to visit Virginia, where some 
of his family had settled, and where he remained for seven years 
studying the natural resources of the country, and collecting speci- 
mens of animals and plants. After returning to England he be- 
came known, through his collections, to Sir Hans Sloane and other 
English naturalists, who encouraged him to revisit America for the 
purpose of describing the curious and interesting objects of nature. 
He left England in 1722 and established himself in Charleston, 
South Carolina, where he devoted some time to exploring the coast 
region, probably penetrating to the eastern base of the Blue Ridge, 
and afterwards extending his travels through Georgia into north- 
ern Florida. Having spent nearly three years on the continent, 
Catesby sailed for the Bahama Islands, which he was the first bota- 
nist to visit, and where he remained for a year, finally returning to 
England in 1726. Having learned the art of etching, Catesby de- 
voted himself to the preparation of his Natural History of Carolina, 
Florida, and the Bahama Islands, containing figures of birds, beasts, 
fishes, serpents, insects, and plants, and illustrated with two hun- 
dred and twenty plates representing animals and plants, usually of 
life size, and drawn and engraved with his own hands. The first 
volume was completed in 1731 and the second in 1743, an appendix 
appearing in 1748. At the time of its publication the Natural 
History of Carolina was the most sumptuous work on natural his- 
tory which had appeared in England. To the student of American 
botany it is still indispensable, as it contains the earliest descrip- 
tions and figures of a number of important plants, with many curi- 
ous and interesting notes upon their properties and uses. 
In 1763 was published Catesby’s Hortus Britanno-Americanus, a 
description of a number of American trees and shrubs adapted to 
the soil and climate of England, with illustrations printed from 
copper plates. Catesbea, a genus of tropical American shrubs, 
was dedicated to him by Gronovius. 
4 Arbor lauri folio, floribus ex foliorum alis, pentapetalis, pluribus 
staminibus donatis, i. 54, t. 54. 
5 John Fothergill (1712-1780), a native of Wensleydale in 
Yorkshire, and a distinguished physician in London, where he 
lived from 1740 till his death. In 1762 Dr. Fothergill planted on 
his estate in Essex a collection of trees and shrubs which was at 
that time considered one of the most important in England. A 
correspondence with Humphrey Marshall, the Pennsylvania bota- 
nist and the author of the Arbustum Americanum, whose acquaint- 
ance he made through his friend Benjamin Franklin, enabled Dr. 
Fothergill to introduce a number of American trees and shrubs 
into England. (See Darlington, Memorial of Bartram and Marshall, - 
495.) Fothergilla, a monotypic shrub of the south Atlantic coast 
region of North America dedicated to him by Linnzus, associates 
Fothergill’s name with American botany. 
8 Lettsom, Hort. Upton. 30.— Aiton, Hort. Kew. ed. 2, iv. 419. 
