Black Gum Tree Fruit Edible

Black gum is becoming a popular landscaping tree.

Black gum tree fruit edible. The wood is used for veneer plywood boxes pulp tool handles gunstocks docks and wharves. This tree is also known as sour gum or pepperidge and was called tupelo by native americans. It offers an impressive scarlet fall color and lacks the spiny balls of the unrelated sweet gum. Small greenish white flowers appear in spring on long stalks female flowers in sparse clusters and male flowers in dense heads.

Clusters of three fruits are usually found. One of the most outstanding attributes of the blackgum is its glossy brilliant red leaf color in the early fall. Tkhe bark is dark gray with rectangular fissures that give a blocky appearance. The branches are alternate with simple 5 inch long leaves that are shiny green above and paler and hairy underneath.

The pulp of its fruit is technically edible extremely sour and extremely bitter which is why it is usually used in sweetened preserves. If a female tree has been planted it will have half inch long dark blue black fruit which are readily consumed by the birds and the squirrels though they are too tart for human consumption. Natural gums are polysaccharides of natural origin capable of causing a large increase in a solution s viscosity even at small concentrations they are mostly botanical gums found in the woody elements of plants or in seed coatings. The elliptic leaves are dark green and glossy.

The plants are dioecious male and female flowers on separate trees as well as polygamo dioecious male and female flowers on the same tree. The fruit is edible but very sour. Like many trees the black tupelo also called the black gum tree and the sour gum barely makes it into the edible realm. Nyssa sylvatica grows to 20 25 metres 66 82 ft tall rarely to 35 metres 115 ft with a trunk diameter of 50 100 centimetres 20 39 in rarely up to 170 centimetres 67 in.

The yellowish white seeds are football shaped and have grooves running their entire length. Japanese plum tree mariposa pick up only in tewantin noosa area the plants we are selling can be seen in picture 2 they are 49 each. These trees typically have a straight trunk with the branches extending outward at right angles. Fruits are ovoid bluish black and have a white coating.

Flowers give way to oval 1 2 long fruits which are technically edible but quite sour hence the common name. Although flowers are not showy they are an excellent nectar source for bees. Bees make good honey from black gum blossoms. Other photos are for illustrative purposes showing the fruit and our parent plant.

They are used in the food industry as thickening agents gelling agents emulsifying agents and stabilizers and in other industrial adhesives.