Sassafras
Sassafras albidum (LAURACEAE)
Planting and Growing Sassafras Trees
You’ll find everything you need to know to plant and grow sassafras trees in the accompanying table’s tabs:
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- Flowers, foliage, and fruit of sassafras
- Growing conditions for sassafras
- When to plant sassafras
- How to plant sassafras
- How to prune sassafras
- Watering, fertilizing, and care of sassafras
- Landscape uses of sassafras
- Pest and disease control for sassafras
Growing Sassafras Trees
A few cultivars of fast- to medium-growing, upright, irregular, open, deciduous trees, to 60 ft. (18 m) tall, with fragrant bark, often with multiple trunks, and with shiny, green, oval or mitten-shaped, broad, often lobed, fragrant leaves, to 5 in. (13 cm) long and wide, turning gold, red in autumn, and with red brown bark.
Sassafras Planting and Care Guide
Flowers and Fruit
Many fragrant, ribbonlike, yellow flowers, to 2 in. (50 mm) long, borne in clusters in spring, form deep blue, purple, clustered, berrylike fruit, to 1/2 in. (12 mm) wide, on red stalks in autumn.
Best Climates
U.S.D.A. Plant Hardiness Zones 4–9.
Soil Type and Fertility
Damp, well-drained soil. Fertility: Average–poor. 6.0–7.0 pH.
Where and How to Plant
Full sun. Space 15–20 ft. (4.5–6 m) apart.
Proper Care
Easy. Allow soil surface to dry between waterings. Avoid fertilizing and transplanting. Prune suckers in autumn to maintain treelike appearance. Propagate by cuttings, seed.
About This Species
Good choice for allées, screens in open landscapes. Disease resistant. Japanese beetle, borer, gypsy moth susceptible.