sassafras (Great Smoky Mountains National Park - Trees & Shrubs)

sassafras

Sassafras albidum

Summary ⁵

Sassafras albidum (Sassafras, White Sassafras, Red Sassafras, or Silky Sassafras) is a species of Sassafras native to eastern North America, from southern Maine and southern Ontario west to Iowa, and south to central Florida and eastern Texas. It occurs throughout the eastern deciduous forest habitat type, at altitudes of sea level up to 1,500 m. It formerly also occurred in southern Wisconsin, but is extirpated there as a native tree.

Taxon biology ⁶

Lauraceae -- Laurel family

Margene M. Griggs

Sassafras (Sassafras albidum), sometimes called white sassafras, is a medium-sized, moderately fast growing, aromatic tree with three distinctive leaf shapes: entire, mittenshaped, and threelobed. Little more than a shrub in the north, sassafras grows largest in the Great Smoky Mountains on moist welldrained sandy loams in open woodlands. It frequently pioneers old fields where it is important to wildlife as a browse plant, often in thickets formed by underground runners from parent trees. The soft, brittle, lightweight wood is of limited commercial value, but oil of sassafras is extracted from root bark for the perfume industry.

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