Symplocos is a genus of flowering plants in the order Ericales, and is the only genus in family Symplocaceae. It comprises about 400 species distributed through tropical and subtropical Asia, Australia, the western Pacific and the Americas.
Description
Species in this family are shrubs or trees; they may be dioecious, polygamous or bisexual. Leaves are mostly spirally arranged and are simple with entire or toothed margins; stipules are absent, petioles present, venation pinnate. Inflorescences take various forms, mostly a raceme, spike, panicle, glomerule or a solitary flower. Fruits are single-seeded drupes, often blue.
Central America: Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panamá
Northern South America: French Guiana, Guyana, Suriname, Venezuela
Southern South America: Argentina Northeast, Paraguay, Uruguay
Western South America: Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru
Fossil record
The oldest fossils of the genus date to the lower Eocene of Europe and North America, with the genus being present in Europe as late as the Pliocene. Fossil seeds of †Symplocos granulosa are frequent in sediment rock layers of the Late Oligocene to the Late Miocene of Denmark, Germany, Austria and Poland. The fossil seeds are very similar to the seeds of the extant southern Chinese species Symplocos glandulifera and Symplocos sulcata. Fossil seeds of †Symplocos paucicostata are known from the Middle Pliocene sediment rock layers in Reuver, the Netherlands, and from the Late Pliocene sediment rock layers in northern Italy. The fossil seeds are very similar to the seeds of the extant East Asian species Symplocos paniculata.
↑Nooteboom, H.P. (2004). "Symplocaceae". In Kubitzki, Klaus (ed.). Flowering Plants, Celastrales, Oxalidales, Rosales, Cornales, Ericales. The Families and Genera of Vascular Plants. Vol.6. Berlin: Springer. p.443. doi:10.1007/978-3-662-07257-8. ISBN978-3-642-05714-4.
↑A reconsideration of the diversity of Symplocos in the European Neogene on the basis of fruit morphology by D. H. Mai and Edoardo Martinetto - Review of Palaeobotany and Palynology 140(1):1-26, June 2006 - DOI:10.1016/j.revpalbo.2006.02.001
