My Favorite Tree

By Joel Gillespie
February 21, 2014

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 pins, 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 thirty 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.

The bark, like dogwood, was very dark, fissured both horizontally and vertically, giving it an alligator skin appearance like dogwood 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.

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. Here is what my old black gum looks like today:

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. Here is a picture of the drupes from a deer management association:

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.

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!