Gardening and Such
Social Media
  • Home
  • About Me
    • My Experience Gardening
    • Lessons from Nanny
    • Education
    • Jungle Taming
    • Nanny's Garden Slideshow
  • What We Do
    • Ongoing Care
    • Design
    • Flyer
    • Charges/Costs
    • Scenes from Work
  • Going Green
    • Native Plants
    • Keeping it Clean
  • Contact
    • Contact Form
  • Writings
    • Spring Springing, Pruning, Shearing
    • It's about the People
    • An Autumn Masterpiece
    • The Life Is in the Sap
    • Ten Ways to Die Gardening
    • Fall Gardening I: the Geek Version
    • Confessions of a Certified (and Certifiable) Tree Hugger ​
    • A Day In The Life
    • What's Killing Your Lawn
    • The Sand Hills
    • Sweet Bay
    • Fringe Tree
    • Sweet Gum
    • Sassafras
    • It Will Stop You in Your Tracks
    • A Baker's Dozen Favorite Gardening Books
    • He Planted a Garden
    • Ode to the Humble Cherry Laurel
    • How to Find a Gardener

An Autumn Masterpiece - Black Gum

9/26/2014

4 Comments

 
Picture
Black Gum in Full Fall Regalia
In the yard where I grew up in Columbia, out near the street, was an area we would call a natural area these days. It contained several old dogwoods, two scrub oaks, two big pines, and a tree which looked very much like a dogwood, but which wasn’t. I always had a particular affection for that tree. It is still there, not much bigger than it was forty years ago. When I say that it looked like a dogwood what I mean is that it had leaves very dogwood like, though much glossier and waxy, and a little bigger.
Picture
Black Gum Leaves in Summer
The bark, like dogwood, was very dark, fissured both horizontally and vertically, giving it an alligator skin appearance like dogwood bark.
Picture
Black Gum Bark
Like dogwood its leaves turned a deep red in the fall, actually a deeper red than dogwood leaves, and sometimes with a dash of orange thrown in as you can see in the picture at the top.
But it wasn’t a dogwood. It was a black gum. It didn’t have red berries but small blue-ish berries which dangled from little stems. And it was taller and bigger around than a dogwood. And its leaves, rather than growing out in pairs on opposite sides of the stem, rather alternated one side to another up and down the stem. Black gums tend to be very gnarly looking, limbs twisting this way and that way in their search for light. 
Picture
Gnarly Old Black Gum
Like dogwood, black gum wood is extremely hard. Because of this quality, black gum like dogwood was long revered for uses where high shock resistance was useful – such as in the growing industrial textile industry, or for toys, pulley rollers or gun stocks, or even as handles for mauls or heavy axes. My neighborhood was full of opossums. And ‘possums love the little berries or drupes of the black gum. Have you ever heard the jig ‘Possum Up De Gum Tree? Well, it’s the black gum’s little blue berries that that ole opossum is after in the song. Black gum drupes are eaten by squirrels, deer, raccoons, and even bears – and by dozens of native songbirds.
Picture
Black Gum Drupes - Jeffery S Pippin
Black gums are not that common, and for some reason they don’t live that long generally. They tend to grow as an under story tree in the mature forest, and they do very well growing in the mottled shade provided by large pines. In upland parts of the sand hills black gums do not grow very large. I see them most often as somewhat small volunteers growing up in flower beds of Columbia gardens. Though I  generally take out volunteers like cherry laurel and hackberry I encourage my clients to leave the black gums. They grow very slowly and for all practical purposes are a small tree in that setting, and one of the best small native trees I know of. If clients are skeptical I usually ask them to withhold judgment until fall. Once they see the deep reds and orange leaves they tend to be sold. Black gums are wonderful trees for natural areas.

Black gums can get large however. A couple of years ago I noticed one in the woods across the road from all the plants at Cooper’s Nursery. I walked back to look at it, It was one of the biggest black gums I had ever seen in South Carolina, about two and a half feet in diameter, maybe 65 feet high, with a wonderful spread of limbs suggesting it grew up in a field or open area around a house. It was smothered in vines but the good folks at Cooper’s have been de-vining. I’ve been told that an arborist said it is the largest he has ever seen in the Midlands.

But the largest black gum I have had the pleasure of seeing is in Green Hill Cemetery in Greensboro. It must be well over a hundred years old. Black Gums grow slowly and the Green Hill Gum is almost three feet in diameter.

Picture
Huge Green Hill Black Gum
By the way, the scientific name for black gum is Nyssa sylvatica. Nyssa is a Greek word meaning end or post or trunk. Nyssa is also a Scandinavian word for elf or fairy. I am not sure which is the true origin of this tree name – whether post of the forest or elf of the forest.

Black Gum may also be called Black Tupelo.

I hope you will consider planting and growing this wonderful native tree!


4 Comments
Deb
9/26/2014 08:52:21 am

Love the words and photos, great work.

Reply
essayhave.com link
1/28/2019 05:41:41 am

Autumn season is one of the best seasons in gardening. Just the right amount of sunlight gives life to our plants, that's why many farmers and simple gardeners couldn't help but to be happy during summer season. What were the crops you were talking about? I am just a bit curious to know it. Since I am not the type of person who is into gardening that much my curiosity is just too high about the said matter. If you are going to provide the answer, that will be a huge help for me!

Reply
Michael link
5/11/2022 01:12:35 am

Thanks for sharing this useful information! Hope that you will continue with the kind of stuff you are doing.

Reply
Paul Brown link
10/6/2022 03:22:27 am

Goal history process same final. Bed herself alone effect. Sometimes generation view analysis last direction she feeling.

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    Picture

    Joel Gillespie

    South Carolina  native son, father of five daughters, Christian, explorer, writer, Clemson and USC fan, pilgrim through this beautiful and complicated world...

    Recent Posts
    Ten Ways to Die Gardening
     Favorite Gardening Books
    Tea Olive
    The Sand Hills
    What's Killing Your Lawn
    The Life Is in the Sap
    It's About the People

    Contact Me

      Or let me contact you

    Submit
Proudly powered by Weebly
Questions? Let's chat! ×

Connecting

You: ::content::
::agent_name:: ::content::
::content::
::content::