FIELD ID CHARACTERISTICS:
Leaves and twigs lemon-fragrant when crushed and the thin leaves have a slightly waxy or sticky coating. Stems have raised lenticels.
Description: Deciduous understory shrub to 3 m tall, often forming colonies alongside streams and in bottomlands.
Leaves: Alternate, obovate, thin, 6 to 14 cm long and 2 to 6 cm wide with acuminate tips and entire margins. Leaf undersides distinctly light green.
Flowers/Fruit: Small, yellow flowers which produce red, elliptic drupes up to 1 cm wide. Flowers March/April before leaves emerge; fruits August/September.
Habit and Range: Stream margins and rich moist woods, floodplain forests, mainly in the Mountains, Piedmont, and brownwater river floodplains in the Coastal Plain.
COMMON CONFUSIONS:
Nyssa sylvatica (blackgum) is a small to medium tree that has similar oval, alternate leaves, but its leaves are sometimes toothed and they lack the lemon scent and waxy or sticky coating. N. sylvatica fruits are larger and blue-black.
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