BLACK GUM 



(Nyssa Sylvalica) 



BLACK gum grows from the Kennebec river in Maine to Tampa bay, 

 Florida; westward to southern Ontario and southern Michigan; 

 southward through Missouri, as far as the Brazos river in Texas. The 

 names by which it is known in different regions are black gum, 

 sour gum, tupelo, pepperidge, wild pear tree, gum, and yellow gum. 



The leaves of black gum are simple and alternate; not serrate. 

 They are attached by very short petioles, which are fuzzy when young; 

 they are a rich, brilliant green above and lighter below; rather thick, 

 with prominent midrib. As early as the latter part of August the leaves 

 commence to turn a gorgeous red. The flowers are greenish and 

 inconspicuous, growing in thick clusters, the staminate ones small and 

 plentiful, the pistillate ones larger. They bloom in April, May or June. 

 The fruit of black gum is a drupe about one and a half inches long; 

 inside of it is a rough, oval pit; the pulp is acrid until mellowed by frost. 



The bad name given to black gum by early settlers of this country 

 has stayed with it, though the faults found with it then, should hold no 

 longer. The pioneers were nearly all clearers of farms. They went into 

 the woods with ax, maul, mattock, wedges and gluts, and made fields 

 and fenced them. The fencing was as important as the clearing, for the 

 woods were alive with hogs, cattle, and horses, and the crop was safe 

 nowhere except behind an eight-rail staked and ridered fence. The 

 farmer mauled the rails from timber which he cut in the clearing, 

 and there it was that he and black gum got acquainted. The oak, 

 chestnut, walnut, cherry, yellow poplar, and red cedar were split into 

 rails and built into fences; but black gum never made a fence rail. No 

 combination of maul, wedge, glut, determination, and elbow grease ever 

 split a black gum log within the borders of the American continent. An 

 iron wedge, driven to its head in the end of a rail cut, will not open a 

 crack large enough to insert the point of a pocket knife. In fact, it is 

 as easy to split the log crosswise as endwise. Consequently, the early 

 farmers heaped their anathemas and maranathas on black gum and 

 passed it by. 



Nevertheless, the tree had its virtues even in the eyes of the rail- 

 splitters; for, though it was unwedgeable, it helped along the fence rail 

 industry in a very substantial way by furnishing the material of which 

 mauls were made. It drove the wedges and gluts which opened other 

 timbers. About the only maul that would beat out more rails than one 

 of black gum was that made of a chestnut oak knot. The oak beetle's 



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