Symplocos tinctoria (L.) L'Hér.

Horse Sugar; Sweet Leaf; Dye Bush

Tree

Perennial

Vascular

Horse Sugar is a native deciduous shrub or small tree in the Sweet-leaf family (Symplocaceae). It can be found throughout Alabama. Horse Sugar occurs in a wide variety of habitats from dry pine-oak woods and rocky slopes to creek swamps, pine flatwoods, and maritime forests. It ranges in size and form from a 5-6-foot multi-trunked shrub to a 25-30-foot single trunk small tree. The bark is grayish green or brown in color. It is smooth or shallowly furrowed in texture. The leaves are alternate, petiolate, elliptic to oblanceolate in outline, entire or obscurely serrate, and slightly pubescent below. The leaves are thick and leathery in texture. In some plants the leaves remain green throughout the winter, being shed as the new leaves develop in the spring. In other plants the leaves are shed in the autumn and the plants remain bare until spring. The pith is chambered. Flowers are produced in 6-14 flowered sessile axillary fascicles. The individual flowers have a 5-lobed corolla that is creamy yellow or white in color and numerous stamens with orange anthers. The flowers are fragrant and quite showy. The fruit is a green cylindrical drupe. The leaves of Horse sugar are sweet to the taste and are readily consumed by livestock and white-tailed deer. The leaves, flowers, and stems of Horse Sugar are sometimes infected by the fungus Exobasidium symploci Ellis & G. Martin which causes large fleshy green or white galls. Other members of the fungus genus infect Rhododendrons, Azaleas, Blueberries, and Huckleberries.--A. Diamond

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Native FAC (NWPL)

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