Liquidambar, American sweetgum

Name: Liquidambar, American sweetgum, sweet-gum

Latin name: Liquidambar

Varietys: Liquidambar changii, Liquidambar formosana, Liquidambar orientales, Liquidambar styraciflua (Burgundy, Aurea, Festival, Rotundifolia, Worplesdon)

Foliage:  Deciduous

Mature height: Tree that can reach 82-98 feets even 40 feets

Description: It is a big and conical tree that can be confused with one maple. Not much trees become such spectacular in autumn like the Liquidambar. One specie native of the East of North America, that today shows her beaty in our parks, gardens and streets.

Lobed leafs with 3 to 7 points or lobes, normaly 5, with balsam odor when you squezze. The leafs are soft with brilliant green colour turning reddish in autumn.

The flowers are inflorescences on rosebuds males and females, the female flower becomes in spherical fruit of 1^49⁄₆₄ inches, prickle, wich has a lot of seeds on the point.

Specie very rustic able to bear temperatures until -20 F

It tolerates the ambiental polution, low resistance to the drought. Once It place in the ground It grows up half quickly.

Leafs

Soul and location: In any garden with deep ground, fertile, no calcareous and preferably wet.

At the sun or at the middle shadow above all on very hot zones, where the excess of sun on summer and the low ambiental humidity cause the dessicate  and the weakening of the foliage.

Reproduction: In spring, layer the branches, wait two years to separate the layers of the mother plant.

Pruning: Is not necesary. It is quite resistant to the plagues and the diseases

Interesting notes: Cork bark is pretty but the period of maximum splendor is in autumn, when the leaves turn red, purple or golden.

The exudate (latex), balm that is used as incense in homes and temples, the aztecs used as flavoring tobacco and as object of tax and trade.

Heavy and hard wood is easy to work with machines and woodworking tools. It is used for firewood, in buildings, in cooperage, in elaboration of handicrafts, turned wood articles and musical instruments is appreciated by its size and strength, its fiber is opposed to the disruption caused by external agents.

In traditional medicine it has several uses.

The Balsam is used in perfumery,