Slender Silhouette Sweet Gum is primarily valued in the landscape for its rigidly columnar form. It has forest green deciduous foliage. The lobed palmate leaves turn an outstanding orange in the fall. However, the fruit can be messy in the landscape and may require occasional clean-up.
Slender Silhouette Sweet Gum is a deciduous tree with a narrowly upright and columnar growth habit. Its average texture blends into the landscape, but can be balanced by one or two finer or coarser trees or shrubs for an effective composition.
Slender Silhouette Sweet Gum will grow to be about 50 feet tall at maturity, with a spread of 10 feet. It has a high canopy with a typical clearance of 5 feet from the ground, and should not be planted underneath power lines. It grows at a fast rate, and under ideal conditions can be expected to live for 70 years or more.
This tree should only be grown in full sunlight. It prefers to grow in average to moist conditions, and shouldn't be allowed to dry out. It is very fussy about its soil conditions and must have rich, acidic soils to ensure success, and is subject to chlorosis (yellowing) of the foliage in alkaline soils. It is somewhat tolerant of urban pollution. This is a selection of a native North American species.
