Tree to 25 m; bark aromatic, breaking up into small plates and appearing scaly-roughened; lvs firm, lanceolate to oblong or oblanceolate, 6-12 cm, with mostly 15 or more pairs of inconspicuous lateral veins, acuminate at the tip, acute or obtuse at base, finely incurved-serrate; racemes terminating leafy twigs of the current season, 8-15 cm; pedicels 3-6 mm; sep oblong or triangular, 1-1.5 mm, entire or sparsely glandular-erose, persistent under the fr; pet white, 4 mm, with subrotund blade; fr dark purple or black, 1 cm thick, edible when fully ripe; 2n=32. Formerly a forest tree, now abundant as a weed-tree of roadsides, waste land, and forest-margins; N.S. to N.D. and sw. Ont., s. to Fla., Ariz., and Guatemala. May.
Gleason, Henry A. & Cronquist, Arthur J. 1991. Manual of vascular plants of northeastern United States and adjacent Canada. lxxv + 910 pp.