Is Sweet Gum A Soft Or Hardwood Tree

Sweet gum is a native species to the southeast.

Is sweet gum a soft or hardwood tree.

Red gum lumber is considered a specialty product and not quoted in the market reports. Sweet gum wood though has been another story. Trees vary in height the shape of their canopies type of foliage fall color flowers or fruit as well as other. It is not an invasive species.

As you learned earlier sweet gum is easily identifiable as it comes from a tree that produces star shaped leaves that contain five points along with spiked fruit. It did serve as a curative for confederate soldiers dysentery and was harvested during the second world war when asian supplies were cut off. The yellowish colored sap technically called gum in a hardwood tree is exuded from bark wounds and can actually be boiled down and concentrated into a salve that will reportedly cure skin. Some red gum lumber is still produced and even sold on the export.

Is sweet gum a hardwood or softwood. Such trees can grow to be as old as 400 years old and they can reach towering heights of 150 feet. Although soft woods such as radiata pine are still the dominant tree for plantations eucalypts such as shining gum tasmanian blue gum black butt flooded gum mountain ash and white gum are being grown in increasing volume for hardwood timber and high grade paper pulp. Its heartwood is variable and ranges from dark brown to a lighter reddish brown.

The gums are an important part of the eastern hardwood forests and are found throughout the southeastern u s. General description the sapwood tends to be wide and is white to light pink while the heartwood is reddish brown often with darker streaks. American sweetgum liquidambar styraciflua also known as american storax hazel pine bilsted redgum satin walnut star leaved gum alligatorwood or simply sweetgum 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 sweet gum is one of the main valuable forest trees in the. Hmmm that s not all true.

Sapgum is defined by the national hardwood lumber association as lumber produced from the sweetgum tree as containing sapwood in excess of the quantity admitted in the grades of red gum lumber. However it can be a pioneer tree species and will be one of the first species to recolonize an open area but if you leave succession to do its part you will see that sweet gum certainly do not take over in the long run. Despite the world demand for liquidambar through the centuries little was done with the yield of the north american sweet gum tree.