The Water Needs of Sweet Gum Trees

Description

• An average sweetgum reaches 60 to 80 feet tall but can soar to over a 100 feet. The shiny dark green leaves consist of five or seven pointed lobes that create an attractive star shape. The foliage turns a magnificent red, orange, yellow and purple in the fall. The trees produce spiny, round fruit that mature in autumn but stay on the tree throughout winter, dropping in the spring. The spikes on the fruit are sharp enough to pierce a car tire. The gray bark is deeply creased.

Habitats

• Native to North America, sweetgum grows from Connecticut to Florida and west to Texas, Iowa and Oklahoma. They also appear in the mountains of Central America, beginning in Mexico and traveling to Panama. The trees thrive in moist to wet, acidic soils of valleys and sloped areas. They grow often grow near swamps, ponds and streams but can be found in mixed woodland areas as well. A pioneer species, sweetgums also colonize in areas that have been logged or cleared.

Uses

• The sweetgum has many uses. It produces a brown sap. In the 1500s the Aztecs combined this sap with tobacco to create a sleeping agent. The sap can be used to make incenses or boiled down to create a balsam used to treat skin conditions such as skin cancer and ringworm. In South American people use the balsam to treat gonorrhea and leucorrhoea. Manufacturers use its wood to make flooring, furniture, veneer, baskets and paper pulp. Landscapers plant the trees in yards and parks because of their stunning autumn foliage and the shade they produce. These trees grow quickly, are resistant to insect attacks and correct nitrogen levels in the soil. This makes them ideal for reforestation efforts.

Care

• While sweetgums will survive heat and drought, they need moist soil to truly thrive. To maintain a damp soil, keep a 2- or 3-inch layer of mulch around the trunk of the tree year around. This mulch should extend as far as the leaf canopy in order to cover the entire root zone. In time of drought, occasionally soak the soil around the tree with water to help it grow. Add a granular, slow-acting tree fertilizer to the mulch in the fall once a year for three or four years to enrich the soil. Sweetgums keep their shape without the add of pruning. The only reason to prune these trees is if you want to reveal more of the trunk. If you do trim the tree, do so in winter.