FIELD ID CHARACTERISTICS:
As the common name implies, the leaves taste sweet when chewed, making it a favorite of ungulates. Stems have a chambered pith inside, seen when carefully sliced lengthwise.
Description: Shrub or small tree reaching 8 m in height; tardily deciduous with leaves persisting into winter and a few into spring.
Leaves: Alternate, elliptic or oblanceolate, often with red or purplish blotches. Edges of leaves with minute serrations. Peach-like fuzz on underside of leaves.
Flowers/Fruit: Yellow, fragrant petal-less flowers with many stamens in spherical clusters close to stem. Fruit is oblong, green drupe, ripening to purple. Blooms March to May; fruits in August/September.
Habit and Range: Damp, yet sandy, soils in mesic woods, ravines, bottomland forests, pine flats, sandy thickets, and pocosin edges, mainly in the Coastal Plain, but still common in the eastern Piedmont. Favors pine-dominated sites.
Taxonomic Note: This is a monotypic genus - the only genus and species in the sweetleaf family. Also called horse-sugar.
COMMON CONFUSIONS:
In some areas, Symplocos tinctoria (common sweetleaf) can be confused with Kalmia latifolia (mountain laurel) when not in bloom. K. latifolia has no spots/glands on leaf undersides, and longer, less elliptic leaves. Kalmia latifolia also is found in rocky and upland areas, not just wetlands. Flowers of Kalmia latifolia are large clusters of white and pink striped open cups.
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