Sweet Gum Tree Balls Edible

The only difference is sweetgum balls drop all fall and winter.

Sweet gum tree balls edible. It is harvested in autumn. They are an extremely prickly fruit inedible by the way. The only edible part of the tree is the dried sap which makes a fragrant bitter chewing gum. It forms in cavities of the bark and also exudes naturally.

The sweet gum tree is the sand spur of the forest. The infertile seeds of the sweet gum ball contain shikimic acid which is also contained in the same tree used to make tamiflu. A chewing gum and a stabilizer for cakes etc is obtained from the resin. Sweet gum tree balls aren t edible.

Sweet gum balls start out plump and green but they dry as they mature. Perhaps it is time for some rehabilitation. If you re up for some experimenting sweet gum balls can been used to make a tea from boiling the young green seeds. We ve taken hundreds of walks in our neighborhood and have run into the same patches of spiky balls countless times.

On our typical route there are 3 trees that bear these weird little balls. You can even get creative and use them to make holiday trinkets or decorative balls for bowls. Edible parts of sweet gum. These seeds are food for about 25 species.

The balls can be used as mulch to keep animals away from young plants or decorative balls for bowls. Larger bird species with beaks too large to get to the seeds leave these to their smaller competitors. You painfully find them with your feet. Are sweetgum tree balls edible.

Yeah i giggled a little inside at the search terms. In fact sweetgum balls are anything but sweet. Just like leaves they must fall so the tree can prep for new growth. While they re not edible the balls can double as spiky mulch to keep animals away from young plants.

However the search is long overdue. The finches nuthatches and chickadees will then begin pressing their small beaks into the sweet gum balls many chambers extracting the two edible seeds that each chamber contains. Most people want to know how to get rid of the tree from which they come how to prevent it from fruiting or if you can compost sweetgum balls. A salve can even be made by burning those infernal sweetgum balls down to ash which is satisfying in its own right and mixing that ash with bear grease or lard.

But perhaps the most interesting medicinal use of sweetgum is its use as a targeted influenza treatment that s on par with off the shelf medications because the ingredients are the same. The spines become even spinier and holes open up to reveal seeds inside the balls. The aromatic resin storax is obtained from the trunk of this tree. Anything just get rid of the darn things.

It can also be chewed to sweeten the breath.