Photo: Eric Hunt, CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Sweetleaf

Symplocos tinctoria

Also called horse sugar, common sweetleaf, wild laurel, dyebush.

A small understory tree with fluffy, fragrant cream flowers on its bare twigs in early spring and leaves with a faintly sweet taste.

Showy flowersWildlife valueTolerates shadeTolerates wet soilRare

Type: Small tree
Mature height: 15–30 ft
USDA zones: 7–9
Growth rate: Medium
Sun: Full, Part, Shade
Soil moisture: Dry, Average, Wet
Grows wild in: The forest understory, floodplain forests, stream banks, sandy barrens and rich moist slopes
Native range: 14 states, north to Delaware, south to Florida and west to Texas
List all 14
Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia
Also recorded in 1 other state, outside its native range. See what is native in your state

Hardiness zones Find your zone by ZIP code

Sweetleaf, or horse sugar, is a shrub or small tree of southeastern woods whose leaves taste faintly sweet, like apple. Cattle and horses seek them out. The name tinctoria recalls the yellow dye once made from its bark and leaves, and the plant is a natural source of alum, used to fix dyes in fabric. The leaves hang on into winter and fall a few at a time. Few nurseries grow it. Plant it in the light shade of tall pines or hardwoods, where its early flowers feed butterflies and other pollinators.

Size, growth and what to expect

Sweetleaf grows at a medium rate, about a foot and a half a year in our growth estimator. Expect a small tree of 15 to 30 feet with a crown 15 to 20 feet wide. Wild plants range from shrubs of about 7 feet to trees of nearly 50.

Fragrant clusters of 6 to 14 cream to pale yellow flowers, fluffy with stamens, open along last year's twigs from March into May, before the new leaves. The dry, orange-brown fruit, about half an inch long, ripens in August and September. Birds and small mammals eat it, and King's hairstreak caterpillars feed on the buds and leaves.

It grows wild from Delaware to Florida and west to Texas, Oklahoma and Tennessee, up to 4,600 feet in the mountains. Tennessee lists it as a species of special concern. In New York, far north of that range, it grows only where it was brought in.

How to grow Sweetleaf

Sweetleaf grows in part shade, full sun or deep shade. Give it a moist, acid soil, sandy or alluvial, though in the wild it ranges from dry pine-oak woods to creek swamps. Plant it 15 feet from a wall and at least 15 feet from overhead wires, and set trees 15 feet apart.

Saplings ship bare-root or potted. Plant them in a hole wider than the roots and no deeper. Set the root flare at the soil line, put the native soil back in, and keep the mulch clear of the trunk. Sweetleaf is difficult to propagate, and no tested sowing method is published. Treat any sowing of its seed as a trial.

Water weekly through the first summer and in dry spells after that. Deer relish the sweet leaves, so cage young trees for their first several years. It suckers, so cut the suckers to keep one trunk or let it grow as a clump.

Each flower carries both male and female parts, and how well a lone tree sets fruit is not known. A fungus causes galls in spring but does no serious damage.

Heights and zones are typical ranges for the species in cultivation; local conditions and seed source shift them.

Sources (8)

Plan the planting