© The Dabney Nursery
Plant: Tupelo Tower - Blackgum Tree
Black Gum Tree · Nyssa sylvatica 'Tupelo Tower'
Size: 30 gal
Light
Bloom
Mature size
More about this plant
A columnar form of the native blackgum, 30 to 40 feet tall and only 10 to 15 feet wide, which suits streets and narrow spaces. Glossy dark green leathery leaves 3 to 6 inches long turn an intense red with orange, yellow and purple tones in fall. Insignificant greenish white flowers in May and June are a prized nectar source for honey bees, and half inch bluish black drupes on female trees feed thrushes and other songbirds, wild turkeys, foxes and raccoons from August through October. It wants full sun and acid to neutral clay, loam or sand, and tolerates moist or occasionally flooded ground as well as drier sites.
- Full Sun
- Grows to 40 ft tall and 15 ft wide
- Blooms in spring
- Hardy in USDA zones 4a-9b
- Deciduous foliage
- Native plant
Plant description
A columnar form of the native blackgum, 30 to 40 feet tall and only 10 to 15 feet wide, which suits streets and narrow spaces. Glossy dark green leathery leaves 3 to 6 inches long turn an intense red with orange, yellow and purple tones in fall. Insignificant greenish white flowers in May and June are a prized nectar source for honey bees, and half inch bluish black drupes on female trees feed thrushes and other songbirds, wild turkeys, foxes and raccoons from August through October. It wants full sun and acid to neutral clay, loam or sand, and tolerates moist or occasionally flooded ground as well as drier sites.
- Flowers
- Small greenish white flowers in umbels in May and June, insignificant but a prized nectar source for honey bees.
- Foliage
- Simple alternate leaves 3 to 6 inches long, elliptical to obovate, dark green, glossy and leathery, turning intense red with hues of orange, yellow and purple in fall.
- Fruit
- Half inch drupes on female trees ripening to bluish black, round to oval, with a thin sharply acid pulp that can be used in preserves.
- Bark & stems
- Gray brown to nearly black bark, deeply furrowed into rectangular ridges, with slender limbs held at roughly 90 degree angles.
- Native range
- Southern Ontario to the Central and Eastern United States, and Mexico
