Sweetgums, Slugs and Bird Flu

This should be a tree for everyone's garden, except for those #@*!?$#! gumballs.  But slug season is soon upon us, so gather up those gumballs and get to work.  A ring of sweetgum fruits around your hostas, it's said, will keep the slugs away, much kinder to the environment than slug poison.  Now comes word from scientists at the American Chemical Society that the mace-like gumballs contain a lot of shikimic acid, used in production of the drug Tamiflu(R), which many countries are stockpiling in the event of a global flu pandemic.  At a recent ACS meeting, Thomas Poon, a professor of chemistry at Claremont College in Claremont, CA, said sweetgum trees "may help to alleviate the worldwide shortage of shikimic acid" because "they have lots of potential for fighting bird flu."  How about that!

And as for the tree itself, I'd definitely consider this one if you need a shade tree.  It has a perfect pyramidal shape and lovely, star-shaped glossy dark green leaves that turn stunning shades of yellow, orange, red and purple in fall.  It can get 60-70 feet high and 40-50 feet wide, so give it lots of room.  Zones 5-9.

(photo: J.S. Peterson, USDA-NRCS PLANTS Database; Drawing: USDA-NRCS PLANTS Database)

Comments

[Donna]

The optimal time to extract the shikimic acid is while the gumballs are in their green state per Science Daily.

[Mary Ann]

there is a sterile sweet gum that (I can't remember the cultivar but I think it starts with 'M') it doesn't make nasty little tree sputnik balls. Of course, I am gathering all mine for bird flu season. Yikes!