Liquidambar

A kaleidoscope of autumn colour

2020, a spectacular autumn: it's officially in the news. Extended warmth, plenty of rain and gentle cold may be contributing to the colour. Field Maple, our only native maple, as was well described in a Snippet last month, gives a gentle glow not only in the bosky edges of woods and along river banks but also beside new roadways as more native species are planted in groves to comfort us for the loss of rural landscape.

Another kind of autumn colour, not at all gentle in its best manifestations, is from non-natives like the Liquidambar catching fire in parks and large gardens. Placed in a prime location in the sunshine, its scarlet and orange intricately cut five-lobed leaves knock your socks off.

Outside a suburban house in Little Waltham, a Liquidambar catches fire in November, 2020.

Another early introduction from the hot and humid swamps and woods of south eastern America, it was noted as being collected in 1681 to be placed in the gardens of Bishop Compton in Fulham. Both its back-home name, the gum tree, and its elegant Latin name, Liquidambar styraciflua, refer to one of its key characteristics: when its ridged trunk is cut or wounded it oozes a sticky yellow resin. 

Thinking of this trait, we understand that the prehistoric world of native American Indian tribes is part of the present reality. Indian tribes according to school lessons made use of every part of their harvest of resources, whether animal or plant. Nothing was wasted. Not just meat but hoof and horn and hide were used. Not just its wood for various building projects or fires but the gum tree's resin was used too, for treating ailments and for protecting the skin from the vicious biting insects like chiggers and mosquitoes also resident in swamps. This tree is native to the areas where the East coast Indian tribes lived and talking of the tree brings to mind its places of origin like the Mattaponi River, the Chickahominy swamp, the county of Chesapeake, these names vividly recalling the history of a previous culture.

Not yet fully mature, a Liquidambar in the Gibberd Garden is given the space to reach its full form.

Though mature specimens in their native habitat if allowed the space can reach 45 metres in height in a characteristic pyramid shape, such large old trees are not common here. There when the tree is mature it forms a fruit that becomes in autumn spiky seed balls, the size of a golf ball, which fall to the ground at the foot of the tree.

These shapely balls, usually with a two or three inch stem strongly attached can be collected to use as attractive Christmas ornaments, gold-sprayed or not. In the UK the gum balls are not formed so regularly but at Bonks Hill House, the first nursery grounds of the well known Rivers Nursery in Sawbridgeworth, which sold showy garden trees as well as fruit varieties in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries for their well-to-do customers, there remains a full grown specimen where gum balls can be found. As you visit Audley End House or other parks, scan the ground below these spectacular eye-catchers for its less vivid but interestingly tactile fruits.

All images, authors own.