The Other Sweetgum

Liquidambar acalycina, which iNaturalist calls Chang’s Sweetgum. These are the Burgundy Flush variety, but this has been such a rotten year for foliage. Compared to American Sweetgum, Liquidambar styraciflua, the leaves here are different, but the smaller, longer-horned seedpod is the quickest way to tell them apart.

Here again is an American Sweetgum pod.
Chang’s on the left, American on the right.
Reversed here: American on left, Chang’s on right.

2 Responses to “The Other Sweetgum”


  1. 1 nature969 December 2, 2021 at 7:04 am

    Thank you for the excellent detailed photos. They are very helpful in identifying the tree.

  2. 2 Charles McAlexander December 3, 2021 at 6:22 am

    the difference in horn length gives rise to the function of the horns. I can’t imagine their purpose, but would like to know.


Leave a Reply to Charles McAlexander Cancel reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s




Share

Bookmark and Share

Join 686 other subscribers
Nature Blog Network

Archives


%d bloggers like this: