Sassafras albidum
Sassafras
Sassafras was touted in Europe as America's herbal curative because of purported miraculous outcomes from the sick who drank sassafras tea. Those claims were exaggerated but the tree did prove to have attractive aromatic qualities and the "rootbeer" flavor of the root's tea (now considered a mild carcinogen) was enjoyed by Native Americans . S. albidum leaf shapes, along with the aromas, are definitive identifiers. Young sassafras seedlings are usually unlobed. Older trees add mitten-shaped leaves with two or three lobes.
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Sassafras
Habitat and Culture
(silvics courtesy of Silvics Manual, USFS)
Fire
Effects On Sassifras
(courtesy of U.S. Forest Service, Fire Effects)
From Virginia Tech
w/Photos
(Big List courtesy of VT Dendrology)
North American Timber Types
(courtesy About Forestry)
The Great American
Hardwood Forest
(courtesy About Forestry)
Recent Champion: 78' height, 69' spread, 262" circumf., Owensboro, Kentucky
National Register of Big
Trees
Image
(images courtesy of Steve Nix and About.com)
Buy a
sassafras Online
(Nurseries selling seedlings online)
Range Map
-The native range of sassafras, USFS.
Quick Stats
Common Names: ague-tree, black ash, cinnamon wood, common sassafras,
file-gumbo, gumbo-file, red sassafras, sasafras, sassafac, sassafrac, sassafras,
sassafrasso, saxifrax, saxifrax tree, smelling-stick, wah-en-nah-kas, white sassafras.
Habitat: sassafras grows largest in the Great Smoky Mountains on moist well-drained sandy loams in open woodlands
Description: 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.
Uses: Lumber, furniture, posts, fence rails and posts, kindling, boxes, cooperage (slack), general millwork, small boats, oil from root bark, colonial dye (orange) from bark.
