Nature Bulletin No. 366-A   January 24, 1970
Forest Preserve District of Cook County
George W. Dunne, President
Roland F. Eisenbeis, Supt. of Conservation

****:SWEET GUM AND TUPELO GUM

There are two queer trees native to the southern counties of Illinois. 
Sweet Gum commonly called Red Gum and a member of the Witch 
Hazel family, now has only three close relatives but fossils of 20 extinct 
species have been found in western America, Europe, Siberia, Alaska 
and Greenland. Storax, the fragrant resinous liquid used in perfumes, is 
obtained from a species in Asia Minor and our tree, when its bark is cut, 
exudes a yellowish balsam-like gum that is a substitute for storax. The 
glossy aromatic star-shaped leaves, with 5 to 7 pointed lobes, are 
gorgeously colored in autumn -- scarlet with tints of orange, yellow and 
purple -- and it should be planted more often as a shade tree.

Sweet gum ranges from Connecticut to Florida and west to Missouri 
and eastern Texas, usually in rich bottomlands where it may occur in 
pure stands of very tall, very straight trees with small crowns of slender 
branches at the top. In pioneer days, in the Wabash Valley, there were 
sweet gums 5 feet in diameter that towered to a total height from 150 to 
165 feet and had a clear cylindrical bole of 80 feet or more before there 
was a branch. The twigs have a star-shaped pith and, as they grow 
older, change from orange or reddish brown to gray, with peculiar 
corky wings. The pollen-producing flowers are compact heads along a 
stalk 2 or 3 inches long and, on the same tree, the female flowers are 
greenish balls that hang on long threadlike stems. These are followed by 
seed balls with a number of spiny beaked capsules each containing one 
or two winged seeds. These brown bur-like seed balls remind you of the 
sycamore.

The hard fine-grained wood is reddish brown, often beautifully 
patterned with darker streaks. Its texture and satiny luster make it 
valuable for interior trim, panels in doors and walls, furniture and cigar 
boxes. In addition to many other uses it is one of the chief sources of 
plywood, frequently sold abroad under such names as "satin walnut".

Tupelo Gum, also called Water Tupelo and Cotton Gum, grows in 
cypress swamps along the coasts from Virginia to Florida, west to 
southeastern Texas, and up the Mississippi valley to the southern tip of 
Illinois. Its only close relatives are the Black Tupelo or Sour Gum 
found here in Cook County, four species in our southeastern states, 
another in central China and one in the Indo-Malayan region. Fossils of 
about 30 species have been found in preglacial rocks throughout the 
North Temperate and Arctic zones.

Tupelo Gum, like the Bald Cypress and other trees that grow in water, 
has a flaring buttressed base and wide-spreading roots. Frequently 80 to 
100 feet tall and 3 or 4 feet in diameter, it has a long clear bole topped 
by a narrow crown of short spreading branches and large oval leaves. It 
is an eerie experience to glide in a dugout canoe through the silent 
dimness of a cypress and tupelo swamp where the dark water is dappled 
here and there with patches of sunlight and the conical cypress knees 
cluster like hooded gnomes around their majestic parents.

The tupelo has a purple plum-like fruit with acrid flesh and a flat pit 
with 10 wing-like ridges. Large quantities of these seeds are produced 
each year and float away on the water. The wood is nearly white and 
widely used for crates and boxes or a veneer for berry boxes. Light and 
weak but difficult to split, it make good planks for warehouse floors and 
platforms. The exceptionally light wood in the swollen butts is used as 
floats for fish nets.

It is interesting to note how many of our trees have kinfolks in China.