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Bursera simaruba
Also called West Indian Birch, Balsam Tree, Gum Tree, Gum Elemi, Lime Tree, Terpentine Tree, Tourist Tree
Gumbo limbo (Bursera simaruba) is a small to medium tropical tree, native from South Florida and Mexico through the Caribbean to Brazil, grown outdoors in warm climates for shade, windbreaks and street planting. It is known for its peeling red bark and is very tolerant of wind, salt and poor, calcareous soils.
Bursera simaruba, the gumbo-limbo, copperwood, tourist tree, turpentine tree, almácigo, or West Indian birch, is a tree species in the family Burseraceae. It is native to the Neotropics, from South Florida to Mexico and the Caribbean to Brazil, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. Bursera simaruba is prevalent in the Petenes mangroves ecoregion of the Yucatán, where it is a subdominant plant species to the mangroves. In the United States, specimens may be found along the regions adjacent to the Gulf of Mexico and extending down the western coast of Florida.
Gumbo-limbo is a very useful plant economically and ecologically. It grows rapidly and is well adapted to several kinds of habitats that include salty and calcareous soils (however, it does not tolerate boggy soils). Gumbo-limbo also is considered one of the most wind-tolerant trees and it is recommended as a rugged, hurricane-resistant species in South Florida. They may be planted to serve as wind protection of crops and roads, or as live fence posts. If small branches are simply stuck into good soil, they will readily grow into sizable trees in a few years, but without a tap root, only producing side roots. Experience has demonstrated in Central America that using branch plantings for posts or wind protection is a questionable practice since those trees and fence posts are not so sturdy as a true, naturally occurring sapling being planted in a traditional manner. In Sarasota, Florida, gumbo-limbo trees have been used as street trees along a commercial portion of Boulevard of the Arts because the roots do not create problems for sidewalks and utilities.
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Bursera simaruba by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
