King ex C.B. Clarke
Description
Symplocos glomerata is an Asian tree distributed from the Himalaya and northern India through Bhutan, Nepal and Myanmar into southern China, Taiwan, Indochina and the Malesian region. Its 572 GBIF records span this broad range, indicating a widespread but locally distributed species of evergreen and mixed montane forest. It grows in broadleaved and laurel-dominated forests, on slopes and ridges, typically in the warm-temperate to lower-subtropical montane belt. The plant photographed at Bersay in the Sikkim-West Bengal border region at about 2700 m in April illustrates its occurrence in the moist mid-elevation forests of the Eastern Himalaya, flowering in early spring.
It is a small evergreen tree or shrub with leathery, alternate leaves that are elliptic to oblong, with serrate to crenate margins and a glabrous, glossy upper surface. The flowers are borne in dense, sessile, glomerate clusters in the leaf axils, as the epithet glomerata indicates; each is small, white and fragrant, with a five-lobed corolla and numerous stamens united at the base in fascicles, a characteristic of the genus. The fruit is a small, ovoid to cylindric drupe crowned by the persistent calyx lobes.
Symplocos is the sole genus of the Symplocaceae, distinguished by its polyandrous flowers and aluminium-accumulating tissues; several species, including this one, have been used to yield yellow dyes and mordants. S. glomerata varies considerably across its wide range and has accumulated numerous synonyms and infraspecific names. Widely distributed and ecologically tolerant, it is not regarded as threatened and is a common constituent of Asian montane forest.
Author: King ex C.B. Clarke · Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Flora of Bhutan, Flora of China, Nooteboom Symplocaceae monograph