Symplocos tinctoria (l.) l'hér. Garden ex L.

Shrubs or trees, deciduous to tardily deciduous, 2-15 m. Bark gray tinged with pink (somewhat fissured and roughened with warty excrescences). Branches arching upward; branchlets brown. Winter buds 8-12 mm; scales deltate, ciliate, apex acute, glabrous or pilose. Leaves: petiole 8-12 mm; blade elliptic to oblong or oblanceolate, 5.5-12(-15) × 2-6(-7.5) cm, subcoriaceous, base acute, margins usually obscurely crenulate-serrulate, sometimes nearly entire, surfaces abaxially whitish green, pubescent, adaxially green, glabrous or pubescent, midvein raised to prominent adaxially. Inflorescences axillary fascicles, from leaf axils of previous year, 6-14-flowered. Flowers enclosed in bud by orange-colored scales, appearing before leaves; corolla yellow to creamy white, lobes 6-8 mm; anthers orange; ovary incompletely 3-locular; ovules 2 per carpel; disc glabrous; style 5-6 mm. Drupes dark orange to brown, cylindric-ellipsoid, 10-14 mm, glabrous. Seeds ovoid. 2n = 28.

Moist mixed-deciduous hardwoods to dry pine-oak woods, rocky summits or ravines, hammocks, maritime forests, moist to wet pine barrens and flatwoods, streamheads and baygalls, creek swamps and bottomlands; at elevations up to 1,400 metres.

The leaves are chewed for their sweet acid flavour.

Can be grown by cuttings or seedlings. Seeds needs stratification.