Plant: Tupelo Tower - Blackgum Tree

Plant description

A columnar form of the native blackgum, 30 to 40 feet tall and only 10 to 15 feet wide, which suits streets and narrow spaces. Glossy dark green leathery leaves 3 to 6 inches long turn an intense red with orange, yellow and purple tones in fall. Insignificant greenish white flowers in May and June are a prized nectar source for honey bees, and half inch bluish black drupes on female trees feed thrushes and other songbirds, wild turkeys, foxes and raccoons from August through October. It wants full sun and acid to neutral clay, loam or sand, and tolerates moist or occasionally flooded ground as well as drier sites.

Flowers

Small greenish white flowers in umbels in May and June, insignificant but a prized nectar source for honey bees.

Foliage

Simple alternate leaves 3 to 6 inches long, elliptical to obovate, dark green, glossy and leathery, turning intense red with hues of orange, yellow and purple in fall.

Fruit

Half inch drupes on female trees ripening to bluish black, round to oval, with a thin sharply acid pulp that can be used in preserves.

Bark & stems

Gray brown to nearly black bark, deeply furrowed into rectangular ridges, with slender limbs held at roughly 90 degree angles.

Native range

Southern Ontario to the Central and Eastern United States, and Mexico

Plant details