SWEET GUM
Liquidambar styraciflua
COMMON NAME: Red gum, star-leaved gum.
FEATURES: Sweet gum, a tree of the witch hazel family (Hamamelidaceae), native of the eastern United
States, Mexico, and Central America. Along the rivers of the southeastern United States, sweet gums
exceed 125 feet in height and 4 feet in diameter. The deeply cut gray or brownish gray bark forms winged
projections on the twigs. The alternate, palmate, shiny leaves usually have five-pointed, finely toothed
lobes and are fragrant when bruised. In the autumn the starshaped leaves turn brilliant red to purple,
making a valuable ornamental tree. The staminate flowers are inconspicuous, the pistillate in spherical
heads maturing into long-stalked, globose masses of spiky-tipped capsules. The wood is fine-grained,
moderately hard, and fairly strong; the heartwood is known as red gum and hazelwood, is variously
colored red and brown; the sapwood is paler. From incisions made in the tree a gum (storax) exudes that
is resinous and adhesive and somewhat like white turpentine in appearance; it eventually hardens.
MEDICINAL PARTS: Bark, juice.
SOLVENTS: Boiling water (bark, partially), warm alcohol.
BODILY INFLUENCE: Stimulant, expectorant, diuretic, antispetic, disinfectant.
USES: As a remedy for catarrhs of genitourinary passages, coughs of pulmonary affection generally,
gonorrhea, gleet, amenorrhea, leukorrhea, phthisis (wasting disease, tuberculosis of the lung,
consumption), and asthma. Also excellent for bloody flux, dysentery, and all bowel complaints of
children.
DOSE: 1 teaspoonful of the cut or granulated bark to 1 cupful of boiling water; drink 1 or 2 cupfuls a
mouthful at a time during the day; adjust for condition and age.
EXTERNALLY: The balsamic juice may be melted with equal parts of olive oil or tallow as a detergent
ointment when conditions of indolent ulcers, frostbite, scabies, itch, ringworm, fistula, scrofula, fever
sores, and hemorrhoids are present.