‘Happidaze’ Sweetgum on Median Strip In Johnson City, TN

Sweet gum (Liquidambar styraciflua) is a low-maintenance deciduous shade tree. The species is native from Connecticut to Florida and west to Missouri and south to Texas and Mexico (USDA hardiness zones 5 – 9). A popular landscape shade tree, it typically grows to 60 to 80 feet tall with a straight central trunk. A young tree is pyramidal in outline, but an older tree gradually forms an oval to rounded canopy.

Most sweetgum cultivars is notorious for producing “gumball” fruits which are hard, spherical, bristly fruit clusters to 1 ½ inches in diameter. Happidaze® is a fruitless cultivar. The absence of messy fruits littering lawns and walkways all fall and winter long sets Happidaze apart from most sweetgum varieties.

Lustrous, long-petioled, deep green leaves (4-7 inches across) with toothed margins emit a sweet fragrance when bruised. Fall color is a rich red maroon. Yellow-green flowers appear in spherical clusters in April-May and offer no significant landscape value. Branchlets may have distinctive corky ridges.

Sweetgum is easily grown in moist, well-drained soils. The tree prospers in full sun and falters in shade. It prefers a slightly acidic soil pH between 5.8 – 6.5; leaves frequently turn chlorotic (yellow) in high alkaline pH soils. Feed in early spring with a slow-release fertilizer such as Osmocote® or Nutrikote®. Refresh the mulch cover around the tree every spring.

Sweetgum rarely succumbs to serious insect or disease problems. Leaf spot diseases, webworms, caterpillars, borers and scales may be occasional problems. Iron chlorosis, a lack of available nutrient iron, may occur in alkaline soils.

Sweetgum is excellent shade, lawn, park or street tree. Give this large tree room to grow and it will reward you with lots of cooling summer shade and glorious fall color for many decades.

Special note: Sweetgum cultivars ‘Rotundiloba’ (medium size tree) and tall narrow ‘Slender Silhouette’ are two other seedless (no gumballs) forms.