30 
SWEET GUM. 
few fibres. It is therefore best grown on the spot where it is to remain, or 
the plants may be kept in pots ; if in the nursery, they should be trans- 
planted every year. It is not very patient of the knife.] 
SWEET GUM. 
Monoeiea Polyandria. Linn. Amentaceæ. Juss. 
Liqtjidambar star ac i flu a. L. foliis palmatis, lobis acuminatis, dentatis ; 
axittis nervorum villosis. 
No tree has hitherto been found in North America so extensively diffused 
as the Sweet Gum. On the sea-shore it is seen,' towards the north-east, 
between Portsmouth and Boston, in the latitude of 43° 30', and it is found 
as far as Old Mexico, towards the south-west : from the coast of Virginia 
it extends westward to the Illinois river, thus spreading over more than 
two-thirds of the ancient territory of the United States, together with the 
two Floridas, Upper and Lower Louisiana, and a great part of New Spain. 
In the United States this tree is universally called Sweet Gum, and by 
the French of Louisiana, Copalm. In the Middle, Western and Southern 
States, the Sweet Gum is sufficiently multiplied to be numbered among the 
most common trees : it is met with wherever the soil is fertile, cool and 
exposed to temporary inundations, and is usually seen in company with the 
Maple, the Tupelo, the Swamp White Oak, the Shagbark Hickory and the 
Butternut. In the South, it grows also in the great Swamps which border 
the rivers, and here, owing doubtless to the mildness of the winter and to 
the intense heat of the summer, it displays its amplest dimensions. The 
largest Sweet Gum that I have observed was in a swamp, 4 or 5 miles from 
Augusta in Georgia ; at five feet from the ground it was 15 feet 7 inches in 
circumference ; it ramifies at the height of 15 or 18 feet, and its summit 
was spacious in proportion to the thickness of its trunk. The soil in which 
it grew was rich and constantly moist, and abounded particularly in the 
Chesnut White Oak, Willow Oak, Wahoo, Black Gum, Red Maple, Red 
Ash, and Black Ash. 
