Sideroxylon lanuginosum Michx.

Eastern Gum Bully; Eastern Gum Bumelia; Woolly Buckthorn

Tree

Perennial

Vascular

Eastern Gum Bully is a native deciduous shrub or small tree in the Sapodilla family (Sapotaceae). It is native to the southern and central United States and northern Mexico. In Alabama it is found in the southern half of the state. It occurs in sandhills, on the upper slopes of ravines, and on floodplains of larger streams. Eastern Gum Bully is large shrub up to 30 feet in height. Young twigs are reddish-brown in color, pubescent with gray or rusty hairs, and sometimes armed with short stout spines at the nodes. The bark is reddish brown with flat ridges on older stems and the trunk. Leaves are alternate, petiolate, elliptic to oblong or oblanceolate in outline, with entire margins. The leaves are dark green and somewhat lustrous above and densely pubescent below with tawny hairs. The leaves are deciduous and turn pale yellow before falling. Flowers are produced in hemispherical clusters of 7-17 individual flowers in the leaf-axils. Individual flowers are inconspicuous with 5 whitish petals and 5 stamens. The fruit is a black, leathery berry with usually one large seed. The fruit are consumed by birds and small mammals. The dried sap has been used for chewing gum. Eastern Gum Bully is rather a rather non-descript shrub that does not stand out in the landscape. It is rarely cultivated, but is insect and deer resistant and tolerant of dry, sandy soils. It prefers a well-drained soil in full sun to part shade.—A. Diamond.

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Native

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