Stewartia serrata (Saw-tooth Stewartia)

in your gardenIn Your Garden
globalGlobal Distribution
technicalTechnical Description


gardensm
IN YOUR GARDENStewartia serrata Japan 2007 201 (2)

Type: Deciduous tree
Hardiness Zone: 5-7
Sunlight: Full sun to full shade
Soil Moisture: Well drained
Soil pH: Acid to neutral
Flowering: Eary to mid-Summer
Flowers: White
Leaves: Good fall color
Bark: Reddish brown, mottled
Height: 25 to 35 feet

 


technicalTECHNICAL DESCRIPTION

Small trees to 10 m. (?); periderm on young shoots exfoliating in thin strips or flakes, the young branchlets finely pubescent, slender, grayish and reddish brown; bark on older limbs smooth, reddish brown, exfoliating; winter buds compressed, 4-6 mm. long with 2 reddish brown, marginally ciliate, imbricated scales. Petioles (2-) 5-12 mm. long, shallowly grooved on the adaxial surface; leaf blades ovate to lanceolate or oblanceolate, (1.7-) 2.5-7.5 cm. long, (1-)1.4-2.6 cm. wide, with acuminate apices, serrulate and often ciliate margins with inwardly curved teeth, and cuneate to attenuate bases; upper surfaces of the blades glabrous or with few scattered hairs, lower surfaces glabrous or with hairs along the midvein, sometimes with tufts of hairs in the axils of the midvein and lateral veins. Flowers axillary, pedicels 4-5 (-7) mm. long; bracts subtending the calyx 2, foliaceous, often flushed with red, subopposite, lanceolate with acute apices and undulating, finely serrulate margins, 13-17 mm. long, 7-9 mm. wide, eventually deciduous in fruit. Calyx of 5 basally connate sepals, often suffused with reddish pigment, the free lobes essentially like the bracts in outline, erect or spreading in in bud, lanceolate with acute to apiculate apices and undulating serrulate margins, (12-) 30-33 mm. long, 20-25 mm. wide, the abaxial surface finely sericeous and sometimes (?) suffused with reddish pigment at the base, forming a tube 7-8 mm. long, the entire tube adnate to the base of the corolla, the free portions of the filaments finely pubescent at the base; anthers yellow. Ovary subglobose, 5-angled, glabrous, 3-4 mm. long at anthesis, tapering into a glabrous style, 17-20 mm. long, terminating in 5 very short stigmatic arms 0.5-1 mm. long, the arms marginally ciliate and often appearing connate. Capsules reddish brown, (13-) 16-18 mm. long, (12-) 14-17 mm wide, completely glabrous, subglobose, 5-angled, with short rostrate apices, the style deciduous nearly at the apex of the ovary; capsule dehiscing into 5 locules, the locule walls 6-9 mm. wide. Seeds 2 per locule, 9-12 mm. long, 5-7 mm. wide, planoconvex, obovate in outline, oblique at the notched base with a narrow wing surrounding the raised central portion, reddish brown, the surface finely puncticulate. 2n=30.

 

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GLOBAL DISTRIBUTIONSerrata GlobalDistribution

Known from scattered localities in mountainous areas of southcentral Honshu, Shikoku, and Kyushu Islands, Japan; cultivated in western gardens.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Descriptions from Stephen A. Spongberg, 1974, A Review of Deciduous-Leaved Species of Stewartia (Theaceae), Journal of the Arnold Arboretum 55: 182-214.