Photo: Famartin, CC BY-SA 4.0 (via Wikimedia Commons)

✦ Free preview: full page unlocked

American Sweetgum

Liquidambar styraciflua

Also known as Sweetgum, Redgum, Star-leaved Gum, Alligatorwood, American Storax

At a glance

Family

Altingiaceae

Type

Deciduous tree

Parts used

Resin (gum), inner bark, leaves

Size

60 to 100 feet tall, sometimes taller in old bottomland stands

Bloom

Small greenish-yellow flowers in spring, easy to miss beside the star-shaped leaves and spiky seed balls that follow

Habitat

Moist woods, river bottoms, and swamp margins across the southeastern and eastern United States

Acquisition

Grow or buy

This plant in HerbSense

Key benefits

✦

Soothes coughs traditionally

Supports skin and wound healing

Calms minor skin irritation

Fragrant resin for salves

Traditional uses

✦

Long before it was planted for its blazing fall color, the sweetgum was known to Native American nations of the southeast, including the Choctaw, Cherokee, and Alabama, for the fragrant resin that weeps from cuts in its bark. That resin, sometimes called American storax, was chewed fresh like gum, rubbed on wounds and sores, and folded into salves meant to soothe the skin. Early American settlers learned the practice from Native neighbors and carried the habit into their own households, using the gum for coughs, sore throats, and stubborn skin troubles, and the sticky bark strips were sometimes simmered into a tea for the stomach. It became such a familiar dooryard remedy that soldiers on both sides of the Civil War reportedly chewed sweetgum resin to settle an unsettled gut when other medicine was scarce.

Growing guide

✦

Sun

Full sun for the best growth and the most brilliant autumn color, though it tolerates partial shade.

Soil

Moist, deep, slightly acidic soil rich in organic matter; it adapts to clay and occasional wet feet better than most trees.

Water

Regular, even moisture, especially while young; established trees handle both damp bottomland and average garden conditions.

Planting

Set out nursery stock in fall or early spring, and give it real room, forty feet or more from structures and walkways, since mature trees are wide, deep-rooted, and drop a steady rain of spiky seed balls.

Fresh to dried

✦

Harvest

Resin is traditionally gathered in summer by scoring the bark and letting the sap weep and harden, or by collecting naturally hardened tears from old wounds in the trunk. Leaves are often gathered in autumn once they color.

Drying

Let the raw resin air-cure on the tree or on paper in a warm, airy spot until it firms into an amber, waxy lump. Bark strips are dried flat, out of direct sun, until brittle.

Storage

Keep dried resin and bark in an airtight glass jar away from light and heat, where the resin will stay fragrant and workable for a long time.

Best forms

Raw resin (oleoresin), resin-infused salve, and dried bark are the most traditional forms; the resin is also tinctured in alcohol by some herbalists.

Traditional preparations

✦

Featured preparation

Sweetgum Resin Salve

A fragrant, balsamic salve traditionally patted onto minor cuts, scrapes, and dry or irritated skin, in the same spirit as benzoin or balsam salves.

How it's made. Traditionally, 1 tablespoon of softened sweetgum resin is gently warmed with 4 tablespoons of olive oil and 1 tablespoon of beeswax until melted and blended, then poured into a small tin to cool and firm before use.

Secondary preparation

Sweetgum Bark Tea

A mild, old-fashioned infusion once sipped for coughs and an unsettled stomach.

How it's made. Traditionally, a tea is made by simmering 1 teaspoon of dried inner bark in 250 ml of water for about 10 minutes, then straining before drinking.

Pairs well with

✦Benzoin
✦Balsam of Peru
✦Mullein

Substitutes

✦Balsam of Peru
✦Pine resin

Choose it when

“For the tree whose autumn leaves burn like embers and whose amber tears once mended both wounds and coughs.”

Did you know?

The sweetgum's star-shaped leaves and spiky, hanging seed balls make it one of the most recognizable trees in the eastern woods, but its family tree is ancient: fossilized Liquidambar leaves nearly identical to today's have turned up in rock formations tens of millions of years old, making this tree a living echo of forests long gone.

Safety

The hardened seed balls are a real trip-and-fall hazard underfoot, and the fresh resin can irritate skin in sensitive people, so patch test before wider use. Raw resin shouldn't be taken internally beyond small, traditional amounts.