Q&a - What tree do gum balls come from?

Gum balls come from the sweetgum tree. They are called by many other names including liquid amber (The tree is in the Liquidambar genus). The gumballs are the seed pods. They start out green but turn brown and fall off the tree. Sweet gum trees have a nice shape and have beautiful fall foliage often with leaves that are several different colors. Shelby County Extension Director Jim Todd does note that beavers like sweet gum trees and can girdle and kill them.

"What tree does gum balls come from?" And this is from mister Rex. How 'bout that question? What tree do gum balls come from, we all know that, right? - Yeah, I believe so, I believe so. - Sweet gum, right? It's that old Liquidambar, that's what that is. - Matter of fact, here we call it sweet gum, when I lived in California, they call it Liquidambar, which is the actual first part of its botanical name, the second part I can't pronounce. - [Chris] Styraciflua. - What is it? - Styraciflua. - Thank you. I fought that last night, tried to figure out how to say it. - We had, of course, in the back yard where my parents live, like six or seven gum ball trees in the back yard, and of course as kids we'd take the little green gum balls and roll 'em up real good in some dirt and use 'em as a baseball. - And I'll have to say, Chris, just a little side note here, is that beavers really love 'em. On my place that's one of their favorite foods, they really do and they'll actually girdle 'em, I've had some that are this big around that they've actually girdled three feet tall, so if you're in an area where you've got water and beavers, you need to watch your sweet gums, it's one of their favorite foods. - Didn't know that before, okay. - Also too, the sweet gum is a very pretty tree. - [Chris] Especially in the fall. - In the fall with the multi-colored leaves. - [Jim] Really is. - It's really, really pretty. All you just gotta remember is just don't go out in bare footed.