Black Gum

[SwampDonkey]

Talking about sprouting new trees. There is a guy trying to sell his old house trailer and he's too far away to do lawn maintenance, works thinning on our crew, and the lawn is now populated with new root suckered aspen trees about 4 feet tall after this summer.

[Magicman]

The largest living thing in the world is supposed to be an Aspen in Utah.  That's a bunch of suckering.

[Jasperfield]

Because it's very difficult to split, people used to make wagon (and cart) wheels from it.
It cannot be split with a go-devil.

And, they are good wildlife trees. Almost every large mature tree is hollow. The bark looks similar to large sourwoods, but the Blackgums grow much larger in diameter.

[Magicman]

My old "out the back window" Black Gum has about lost all of it's leaves.  My interest in Black Gum is not because of any particular beauty.  Sure, it's the first tree to show color in the Fall, but the entire tree is never red.  It's a gradual thing.  Some turn red and then fall off while the rest are still green.  The tree just gradually becomes bare.  This old gal still has a few green leaves, but most have already turned and fallen.
 


Compared with the Cherrybark Red Oak on it's right which has no turned leaves yet.