THE SWEET LEAF 125 



is easy to see that these trees are strangers from warm 

 countries, for many of their traits are singularly unfamiliar. 



The Sweet Leaf 



Symplocos iinctoria, L'Her. 



The sweet leaf is our sole representative of a large genus of 

 trees native to the forests of Austraha and the tropics in 

 Asia and South America. They yield important drugs and 

 dyestuffs, particularly in British India. But the sweet 

 leaf is a small tree, rarely over twenty feet in height, with 

 ashy gray bark, warty and narrowly fissured. In earhest 

 spring its twigs are clothed with yellow or white blossoms 

 that come in a procession and cover the tree from March 

 until May, preceding the leaves, and breathing a wonder- 

 ful fragrance into the air. The leaves are small, leathery, 

 dark green, lustrous above, deciduous in the regions of 

 colder winters, persistent from one to two years in the 

 w^armer part of its range. The flowers are succeeded by 

 bro^sTi berries that ripen in summer, or early autumn. 

 The flesh is dry about the single seed. 



Horses and cattle greedily browse upon the foliage, 

 which has a distinctly sweet taste. The bark and leaves 

 both yield a yellow dye, and the roots a tonic from their 

 bitter, aromatic sap. 



"Horse sugar" is another local name for this little tree, 

 which is found sparingly from Delaware to Florida, west 

 to the Blue Ridge Mountains, and in the Gulf states to 

 Louisiana and northward into Arkansas and to eastern 

 Texas. It is a shade-loving tree, usually found under the 

 forest cover of taller species, skirting the borders of 



