Natives For Your Neighborhood
Conservation of rare plants, animals, and ecosystems

General Landscape Uses: Accent tree in wet areas and along ponds and lakes edges.

Availability: Grown by one or two native plant nurseries in South Florida.

Description: Small tree to medium tree or large shrub with a speading, open, irregular crown. Trunks short, often leaning. Bark gray, roughened with ridges and furrows. Leaves temperate deciduous, light green, long and narrow, to about 8 inches long.

Dimensions: Typically 15-30 feet in height in South Florida; to 68 feet in Florida. Often as broad as tall or broader.

Growth Rate: Fast.

Range: Eastern and central United States west to Texas and south to Miami-Dade County and the Monroe County mainland. For a digitized image of Elbert Little's Florida range map, visit the Exploring Florida website. Note: Little's map shows S. caroliniana distributed in the Florida Keys; this appears to be an error.

 Map of select IRC data from peninsular Florida.

 Map of suggested ZIP codes from South Florida north to southern Brevard, Osceola, Polk, and Pasco counties.

 Map of ZIP codes with habitat recommendations from the Monroe County Keys north to Martin and Charlotte counties.

Habitats: Wet thickets and swamps.

Soils: Wet to moist, moderately well-drained to poorly-drained organic soils.

Nutritional Requirements: Low; it grows in nutrient poor soils.

Salt Water Tolerance: Low; does not tolerate long-term flooding by salt or brackish water.

Salt Wind Tolerance: Moderate; grows near salt water, but is protected from direct salt spray by other vegetation.

Drought Tolerance: Low; requires moist to wet soils and is intolerant of long periods of drought.

Light Requirements: Full sun to light shade.

Flower Color: Greenish-yellow.

Flower Characteristics: Semi-showy catkins.

Flowering Season: Spring.

Fruit: Capsule containing wind dispersed seeds.

Wildlife and Ecology: Provides some food and significant cover for wildlife. Only native larval host plant for viceroy (Limenitis archippus) butterflies; also larval host for (Automeris io) moths. Attracts bee pollinators.

Horticultural Notes: Can be grown from seed and cuttings (including root cuttings).

References: Schaefer & Tanner 1997