Symplocos sumuntia Buch.-Ham. ex D. Don

Like many east Asian Symplocos, S. sumuntia enjoys a wide distribution as an evergreen understorey shrub or small tree. This range extends into the tropics, but Japanese and especially Korean provenances are likely to be quite hardy. (The hardiness zones suggested above are pure guesswork: this species has almost certainly not been tested to its limits in cultivation in the west.) It is also a characteristically difficult plant to identify; Plants of the World Online (Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew 2024) lists more than fifty synonyms which have accumulated since it was first described by David Don in 1825 from Nepal as a plant growing ‘near the summits’. The leaves have a sweet-sour flavour and are used in Chinese cuisine (Plants for a Future 2024), and lignans in the foliage have some potentially useful anti-inflamatory properties (Huong et al. 2017).

This is one of several evergreen Symplocos with a tiny and sometimes ambiguous presence in the west. Plants of this kind have long been grown at Caerhays Castle in Cornwall (UK) and used to be known as S. glomerata, a species from similar habitats which bears its flowers in more densely congested clusters; in 1984 there was a small tree here, 11 m × 21 cm dbh (The Tree Register 2024). The origins of this material are unrecorded, but this could well have been among the species sent to Caerhays from the mountains of south-western China by George Forrest in the early decades of the 20th century. The present-day plant at Caerhays is more of a spreading bush, but it may represent regeneration from a rootstock following storm- or frost-damage; it was re-identified by Susyn Andrews in 2019 as S. aff. sumantia (Williams 2019). Either it is self-fertile, or it gets successfully pollinated by one of the other evergreen Symplocos at Caerhays; its fruit ripens blue then black, and quickly falls. The white flowers in spring are pretty, as in much of this genus (Williams 2020).

Symplocos sumuntia also grows at nearby Tregrehan, from a collection made on the Emei Shan in Sichuan, China; here – as an understorey plant might expect to happen – it was recently crushed by a falling branch and is now 4–5 m tall (T. Hudson pers. comm. 2024), notable for the lovely scent of its showy flowers in early spring.

At the University of California Botanical Garden at Berkeley, the species is represented by a collection made in Kyoto, Japan, in 2001 (University of California Botanical Garden 2024). This should be hardier, but will not have been tested in this garden’s frost-free climate.