Sideroxylon lycioides
Credits
Article from Bean's Trees and Shrubs Hardy in the British Isles
Recommended citation
'Sideroxylon lycioides' from the website Trees and Shrubs Online (treesandshrubsonline.
A deciduous, small tree over 20 ft high in a wild state, but usually a shrub little more than half that height in cultivation; branchlets glabrous, and on young specimens usually armed with spines 3⁄4 in. or less long. Leaves firm and rather hard in texture, varying in shape from narrow oval to obovate (the former shape more characteristic of young plants), 1 to 5 in. long, 1⁄2 to 11⁄2 in. wide; always tapered to the base, pointed or rounded at the apex, not toothed, and quite glabrous except for a few silky hairs about the midrib beneath; conspicuously veined; stalk 1⁄6 to 1⁄3 in. long. Flowers 1⁄8 in. in diameter, produced in August and September, each on a glabrous stalk 1⁄2 in. or less long, crowded numerously in hemispherical clusters in the leaf-axils. Corolla white; calyx comparatively large, green. Fruit egg-shaped, 1⁄2 in. long, black, rarely or never seen in this country.
Native of the south-eastern United States, and known in England since 1752, but not ornamental enough to be generally cultivated. It is quite hardy at Kew, but appears to be the only one of the genus of which so much can be said. The leaves on young sterile plants resemble those of a peach in size and shape.