SYMPLOCACE^E 



831 



in drying, without stipules. Flowers regular, perfect, or polyganio-dioacious, on ebrac- 

 teolate pedicels, in dense or lax axillary spikes or racemes, with small caducous bracts; 

 calyx campanulate, 5-lobed, open in the bud, the tube adnate to the ovary, enlarged after 

 anthesis; corolla divided nearly to the base into 3-11 usually 5 lobes imbricated in the bud; 

 disk 0; stamens usually numerous, inserted in many series on the base of the corolla or 

 rarely 4 in one series; filaments filiform or flattened, more or less united below into clusters; 

 anthers ovoid-globose, introrse, 2-celled, the cells lateral, opening longitudinally; ovary in- 

 ferior or partly inferior, 2-5-celled, contracted into a simple style, with an entire or slightly 

 lobed terminal stigma; ovules 2 or rarely 4 in each cell, suspended from its inner angle, 

 anatropous; raphe ventral; micropyle superior. Fruit a drupe (in. the North American 

 species), crowned with the persistent lobes of the calyx, with thin dry flesh and a bony 

 1-seeded stone. Seed oblong, suspended; seed-coat membranaceous; embryo terete, erect 

 in copious fleshy albumen; cotyledons much shorter than the long slender radicle turned 

 toward the broad conspicuous hilum. 



The family consists of the genus Symplocos. 



1. SYMPLOCOS L'Her. 



Characters of the family. 



Symplocos with nearly three hundred species inhabits chiefly the warmer parts of Amer- 

 ica, 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 Stf/rXoKos, 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 



Fig. 737 



green and lustrous on the upper surface, paler and pubescent on the lower surface, 5'-6' 

 long and l'-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 



