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 styraciflua
Also called Sweet Gum, Sweetgum, American Storax, Alligator Wood, American Sweet Gum, Red Gum, Satin Walnut
A large deciduous tree native to eastern North America and Central American cloud forests, grown for its star-shaped leaves and autumn colour. It needs room to grow and moist, acidic soil to do well.
Liquidambar styraciflua, commonly known as the American sweetgum among other names, is a deciduous tree in the genus Liquidambar native to warm temperate areas of eastern North America and tropical montane regions of Mexico and Central America. Sweetgum is one of the main valuable forest trees in the southeastern United States, and is a popular ornamental tree in temperate climates. It is recognizable by the combination of its five-pointed star-shaped leaves (similar to maple leaves) and its hard, spiked fruits. It is currently classified in the plant family Altingiaceae, but was formerly considered a member of the Hamamelidaceae.
Liquidambar styraciflua is a popular ornamental and forestal tree, cultivated for its distinctive foliage and intense autumn colors. It is commonly grown throughout its native North American range as well as many other temperate parts of the world, including moderately high elevations in the tropics. It is highly regarded in Bogotá, Colombia. The species grows best in moist, acidic loam or clay soil, and tolerates poor drainage. It typically grows with other coastal plain species such as willow oak and sweetbay magnolia. Its salt tolerance is moderate. Chlorosis can develop on alkaline soil, especially where organic matter is low. Also, the American sweetgum tree does not grow well in shady areas. Grown as an ornamental tree in Australia, Liquidambar styraciflua has a distribution on mainland Australia from southwestern Western Australia, southern South Australia, New South Wales, Victoria, and all the way up to the Atherton Tablelands in far North Queensland.
During the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s, Sweetgums were a popular landscaping and street tree.
Sweetgum is one of the most common hardwoods in the southeastern and Mid-Atlantic United States, where it occurs naturally in lowlands from southwestern Connecticut south to central Florida, through central Ohio and west to Illinois, southern Missouri, and eastern Texas, but not colder highland areas of Appalachia or the Midwestern states. The species also occurs in Mexico from southern Nuevo León south to Chiapas, as well as in Guatemala, El Salvador, Belize, Nicaragua and Honduras. In Mexico and Central America, it is a characteristic plant of cloud forests, growing at middle elevations in various mountainous areas where the climate is humid and more temperate.
Chang’s Sweet Gum · Liquidambar cambodiana · Liquidambar excelsa · Oriental Sweetgum · Sweetgum
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Liquidambar styraciflua 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.
