188 
LANDSCAPE GARDENING. 
The Sweet Gum Tree. Liquidambar. 
Nat. Ord. Platanaceas. Lin. Syst. Monoecia, Polyandria. 
According to Michaux,* the Sweet gum is one of our 
most extensively diffused trees. On the seashore it is seen 
as far north as Portsmouth ; and it extends as far south as 
the Gulf of Mexico and the Isthmus of Darien. In many 
of the southern states it is one of the commonest trees of the 
forest ; it is rarely seen, however, along the banks of the 
Hudson (except in New Jersey), or other large streams of 
New York. It is not unlike the maple in general appear- 
ance, and its palmate, five-lobed leaves are in outline much 
like the Sugar maple, though darker in color and firmer in 
texture. It may also be easily distinguished from that tree, 
by the curious appearance of its secondary branches, which 
have a peculiar roughness, owing to the bark attaching 
itself in plates edgewise to the trunk, instead of laterally, as 
in the usual manner. The fruit is globular, somewhat 
resembling that of the buttonwood, but much rougher, and 
bristling with points. The male and female catkins appear 
on different branches of the same tree early in spring. 
This tree grows in great perfection in the forests of New 
Spain. It was first described by a Spanish naturalist, Dr. 
Hernandez, who observed that a fragrant and transparent 
gum issued from its trunk in that country, to which, from 
its appearance, he gave the name of liquid amber. This is 
now the common name of the tree in Europe ; and the gum 
is at present an article of export from Mexico, being chiefly 
valued in medicine as a styptic, and for its healing and 
balsamic properties. “ This substance, which in the shops 
* N. A. Sylva, i. 315. 
