Last September we celebrated a healthy young sweetgum with a thorough blog post about its history and traits. You can find that post here. We noted a curious leaf-yellowing, but it was attributed to autumnal color change. Today, our sweetgum looks a lot different. The trunk has been thoroughly mutilated. Minor gashes appear along the trunk and large portions of bark have been completely removed. Although we did not catch them red-handed, squirrels are presumed to be responsible for the damage.
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| Suckering sweetgum trunk with minor wounds |
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| Deep wounds open the tree to insect colonizers. Fresh green growth along the trunk suggests a will to live, and this sweetgum could perhaps survive long enough to successfully reproduce. However, for aesthetic reasons, our young sweetgum will most likely be removed in the near future. |
