Sweet Gum Tree Balls Edible

The resin has a wide range of uses including medicinal incense perfumery soap and as an adhesive.

Sweet gum tree balls edible. The only edible part of the tree is the dried sap which makes a fragrant bitter chewing gum. On this early spring day the tree is still a skeleton although leaf buds are just beginning to emerge and dozens of sweet gum balls dangle from its naked branches like shriveled christmas tree ornaments. The downside to growing a sweetgum tree is the seed pods. The sweet gum tree a forty foot tall sweet gum tree rises from the northeast corner of my back yard.

It can also be chewed to sweeten the breath. They make excellent lawn or shade trees in large landscapes. You can even get creative and use them to make holiday trinkets or decorative balls for bowls. It forms in cavities of the bark and also exudes naturally.

Mature leaves are 4 to 7 inches wide. Let s not forget about the beauty of the sweet gum ball tree itself. This large tree provides shade in the summer gorgeous orange red and yellow leaves in the fall and is a great privacy barrier. Sweet gum tree leaves have five to seven pointed lobes and their shape will remind you of a star.

It s called sweet gum to separate it from a different species altogether the black gum nyssa sylvatica which is extremely sour and bitter. Their fall color lasts much longer than most other trees. It is harvested in autumn. What are sweetgum balls.

As previously mentioned sweetgum balls are the fruit of a medium to large size tree 65 155 feet tall with a trunk up to 6 feet across that can live for an extremely long time up to 400 years. It is not however sweet. While they re not edible the balls can double as spiky mulch to keep animals away from young plants. It takes the sweet gum tree 20 to 30 years to mature enough to produce its fruit.

A chewing gum and a stabilizer for cakes etc is obtained from the resin. The gum has long been harvested and used for chewing gum but it is also known to have anti inflammatory properties. While you wait the tree has much to offer. The fruit it bears provides food for many animals including squirrels wood ducks whitetail deer birds and beavers.

The aromatic resin storax is obtained from the trunk of this tree. The spines become even spinier and holes open up to reveal seeds inside the balls. Despite its name the gum is not sweet. The sweet gum got its name for the resinous sap that results when you score its bark.

These seeds are food for about 25 species. Other uses of the herb. Children call them gumballs or stickerballs and it s rare to find a child with a sweetgum growing nearby that hasn t had an unpleasant experience with the spiky pods. In comparison the mildly bitter sweet gum is definitely sweeter.

The trees spike ball fruit is almost as telltale for identification as the star shaped leaves. The sweetgum tree liquidambar styraciflua produces an extremely spiked capsule containing one or two seeds in the summer. Sweet gum balls start out plump and green but they dry as they mature.