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sorrel-tree, sourwood

Habit Shrubs or trees.
Stems

erect;

twigs glabrous or puberulent.

Leaves

deciduous;

blade elliptic-oblong to elliptic, ovate, or obovate, ± chartaceous, margins irregularly compound-serrate or serrulate, especially distally, or entire (sometimes fringed with elongate hairs, especially when juvenile or on stump sprouts), plane, surfaces multicellular elongate-hairy (hairs stout) on midvein (rarely also secondary veins) abaxially, sometimes such hairs also on midvein and lamina adaxially, or such hairs absent, and ± sparsely unicellular-hairy on both surfaces of midvein or such hairs absent;

venation brochidodromous.

Inflorescences

terminal panicles composed of arching-declinate racemes or secondary panicles, 15–50-flowered, (borne on shoots of current season).

Pedicels

bracteoles 2, medial or distal.

Flowers

sepals 5, connate slightly to 1/2 their lengths, lanceolate;

petals 5, connate ca. 3/4 their lengths, white, corolla urceolate to cylindric-urceolate, lobes much shorter than tube, (densely unicellular-hairy, hairs short to elongate, crisped to straight);

stamens 10, slightly exserted;

filaments straight, flat, hairy, without spurs;

anthers without awns, dehiscent by slitlike pores, with white line of disintegration tissue on each lobe abaxially;

pistil 5-carpellate;

ovary 5-locular;

stigma capitate-truncate.

Fruits

capsular, ovoid, (with very slightly thickened sutures), dry.

Seeds

25–100, narrowly oblong, (tailed);

testa cells elongate.

x

= 12.

Oxydendrum

Distribution
from USDA
e United States
[BONAP county map]
Discussion

Species 1: e United States.

Oxydendrum had been considered to be isolated from other genera of tribe Andromedeae Klotzsch (P. F. Stevens 1971; C. E. Wood Jr. 1961). Recent phylogenetic analyses (K. A. Kron et al. 2002) support those earlier views, placing the genus as the sister group of the clade including such genera as Andromeda, Gaultheria, Lyonia, and Vaccinium. Oxydendrum is now, therefore, assigned to its own tribe, Oxydendreae H. T. Cox.

Species 1

(Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.)

Source FNA vol. 8, p. 496. Author: Walter S. Judd.
Parent taxa Ericaceae > subfam. Vaccinioideae
Subordinate taxa
O. arboreum
Name authority de Candolle: in A. P. de Candolle and A. L. P. P. de Candolle, Prodr. 7: 601. 1839 ,
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