The open plant encyclopedia
Snap a photo or search by any name to see how to care for it, where it comes from, whether it's safe, and a 3D model you can turn.
The plants people record most in your country, and ones that grow there wild.
Filter by what you want to do, shape, origin, country, care and safety.
Liquidambar orientalis
Also called Oriental Sweet Gum, Storax, Turkish Sweetgum
Oriental sweetgum is a deciduous tree that grows 30 to 35 m tall in its native southwestern Turkey and Rhodes, valued for its colourful autumn leaves. It does best in deep, moist soil near rivers and bogs, and it is rarely grown outside its native range.
Liquidambar orientalis, commonly known as oriental sweetgum or Turkish sweetgum, is a deciduous tree in the genus Liquidambar, native to the eastern Mediterranean region, that occurs as pure stands mainly in the floodplains of southwestern Turkey and on the Greek island of Rhodes.
The forests of this Tertiary relict endemic taxon are found notably within a specially protected area between Dalyan and Köyceğiz in Muğla Province, Turkey, where a 286 ha (710 acres) zone is set aside as a nature reserve and arboretum for the preservation of the species. A large stand also surrounds Marmaris. Another sweetgum forest area of 88.5 ha (219 acres) under protection is situated in Burdur's district of Bucak alongside Karacaören dam reservoir on the road to Antalya. The trees are also found locally in Denizli's districts of Beyağaç and Tavas. The total area of pure sweetgum forests in Turkey covers 1,348 ha (3,330 acres), all in the southwestern regions of the country. The present-day extension corresponds to a marked decrease since the 1940s level of 6,000–7,000 ha (15,000–17,000 acres), although the protective measures and infrastructure in place since the 1980s helped stop loss of stands and led to slight improvements. The species is also found on the Greek island of Rhodes, in a riparian forest inside a narrow, steep valley on the island's north coast.
Chang’s Sweet Gum · Liquidambar cambodiana · Liquidambar excelsa · American Sweetgum · Sweetgum
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Liquidambar orientalis 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.
