Common Name:
Sweetleaf
About 250 species, mainly tropical or subtropical, of deciduous or evergreen trees or shrubs, usually glabrous, occasionally pubescent. Leaves alternate, simple, margins entire or toothed. Flowers usually bi-sexual, mostly in axillary spikes or racemes, calyx tube short at flowering, enlarging when in fruit, stamens numerous, ovaries with 2-5 locules. Fruits a berry or drupe, usually with only 1 seed. Native to North and South America, Australia and east Asia.
Symplocos: from Greek, symploke, a connection, apparently a reference to the united stamens of the flowers.
Pronunciation:
sim-PLO-kos
Family:
Symplocaceae