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: Commonly available at native plant nurseries in central Florida. Available at native plant nurseries in northeast and 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 Postal Code Areas of IRC data from peninsular Florida.

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).