English: Virginia Sweetspire; Greek willow tree;
Swamp cyrilla; Swamp titi; Red titi; Black titi; White titi; Palo colorado; Leatherwood; Ironwood; He huckleberry; Myrtle.
Genus: 1 species.
Clades:
Cyrillaceae;
Ericidae.
Region: warm temperate to tropical Americas, Texas east to Virginia, Caribbean, Mexico, Central America, northern Brazil, Venezuela.
Habitat: rainforests, swamps, along streams, bogs, bayheads, backwaters, wet prairies, low pinelands, pocosins, flatwood depressions; prefers acidic, sandy, peaty soils.
Culture: waterpolo; Delphi.
BotanyTree; evergreen; large, to 15 metres; shrub to 4 metres tall, deciduous in temperate regions.
Stem: 1 metre in diameter; bark thin, shaggy, reddish-brown; gray to brown, smooth, lightly fissured when young.
Leaves: alternate; simple; oblanceolate to oval, rounded or pointed at the tip, narrowed to the base; thick, without teeth, smooth, sometimes nearly evergreen, reticulate-veined, 4 to 10 cm long, 1 to 3 cm broad.
Inflorescence: in 8–15 cm long racemes; borne on the previous year's twigs.
Flowers: white; 5–10 mm diameter; five white petals; subtended by a slender bract; flowers in summer.
Fruit: yellow-brown capsule; ± 3 mm long.