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Sweetgum (Liquidambar styraciflua)
A deciduous tree from the Witchhazel Family (Hamamelidaceae)
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3-9
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30'
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30'
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medium
to fast
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full to
part sun
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pyramidal
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moist, well-drained, slightly acidic soils, rich
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 Sweetgum, native to the lower two-thirds of the Eastern United States and parts of Mexico, is only found naturally in Ohio in its southernmost counties, but is planted throughout most of the state as a shade tree prized for its brilliant fall colors and rapid growth. The name Sweetgum comes from the taste of its hardened sap that bleeds from wounds on the tree.
The hard-to-split wood is used as veneer and stained other colors to mimic other types of wood. While most commonly found in the wild in floodplains, river bottoms, and moist woodland sites where it may reach 80 feet tall and 40 feet wide, it adapts well to dry soils in urban situations. As a member of the Witchhazel Family, it is related to Fothergilla, Witchhazel, and other Sweetgums.
Planting Requirements - Sweetgum prefers moist to occasionally wet, slightly acidic, deep, rich soils. However, it adapts readily to poor soils of acidic, neutral, or slightly alkaline pH that are dry in summer. It grows in full sun to partial sun, and is found in zones 5 to 9.
Potential Problems - Sweetgum has the potential for several minor diseases (bleeding necrosis is the worst) and pests, but none of great significance in this rapidly growing shade tree. However, significant surface roots will develop with maturity, especially in shallow or hard clay soils, and occasionally chlorosis (a yellowing of the leaves) will develop in high pH soils, almost always in urban plantings.
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Leaf Identification Features
 Sweetgum has star-shaped leaves that are alternate, five-lobed, finely serrated, on long petioles, and with a shiny dark green color in summer.
Fall color is sometimes green to chartreuse, but this species is planted for both its rapid growth and its outstanding fall color.
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 Leaves often go through shades of yellow and orange before culminating in hues of red, crimson, burgundy, and purple. |
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Other Identification Features
Sweetgum, with separate male and female flowers on the same tree (a monoecious species), does not flower or fruit appreciably for the first fifteen or so years of its life.
Afterwards, a steadily increasing avalanche of spiny gumball fruits accumulate, first hanging as green orbs from the tree in summer.
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Thereafter, they are continuously abscising in autumn and throughout the winter, littering lawns or forest floors with fruit debris, long after the fruits have shed their small seeds. |
Twigs are tan-yellow to olive-brown their first year, with large, shiny, dark brown buds, especially at the twig terminus. Later, some trees develop a corkiness and winged character, primarily on the second-year gray twigs and branchlets. |
Other trees are smooth in their young bark, without a hint of corkiness.
Mature bark is deeply ridged and furrowed, with a gray-brown coloration.
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