Homegrown Habitat, October 2025: Sassafras
One of the alternate names for sassafras—mitten tree—comes from the shape of its leaves. By Randy Everette – Imported from 500px (archived version) by the Archive Team. (detail page), CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=71262709
Sassafras is a tree offers many gifts for many kinds of animals. Landscape designer Sarah Middeleer explains. Write to Sarah at homegrown@ctaudubon.org.
The sassafras tree (Sassafras albidum) is not only fascinating for its place in cultural and culinary history, but it supports many types of wildlife and delights humans in every season.
Sassafras (also known as mitten tree and cinnamon wood) grows to a modest size in cultivation, especially in the more northern reaches of its range. Yet there are examples of very old sassafras trees in the wild that are venerated giants.
Sassafras is native to most of the East, South, Midwest, and southern Ontario, and as far west as eastern Oklahoma and Texas. In uncultivated places sassafras grows in fields and thickets, along roads, and at woodland edges. It is intolerant of heavy shade and road salt but otherwise is easily grown in average, well-drained (even sandy), acidic soils in full sun or partial shade. It is highly regarded for restoring depleted soils in old fields. Sassafras is drought tolerant once established, but its long taproot makes for difficult transplanting.
Fall is perhaps the best season for sassafras by human standards, because its foliage turns brilliant orange, gold, crimson, and purple at this time. But in winter the tree’s structure, with a horizontal, tiered branching pattern called sympodial, is also of interest. Its green twigs and furrowed bark—which matures from greenish to cinnamon or mahogany brown and deeply furrowed±add to its beauty in winter.
Come early spring, clusters of fragrant, lemon-yellow flowers seem to dust the sassafras tree in gold. And in summer the berry-like fruits on female trees turn blue, dangling from magenta stalks and “caps” that remain on the tree well into the fall.
Sassafras will mature to a dense, pyramidal tree 30 feet to 60 feet high, with a canopy of 25 feet to 40 feet wide. Its leaves, yellow-green in spring and turning blue-green above and whitish below by summer, may take three different shapes: ovate (or spoon shaped), mitten shaped, or three lobed.
Sassafras flowers. By Famartin – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=81455283
Sassafras trees are dioecious, meaning that some trees are female and others male. While both sexes bear yellow flowers in April and May (the males’ are said to be showier), only the pollinated female flowers will develop the blue-purple fruit, called drupes, that mature in September.
Sassafras foliage is eaten by the caterpillars of spicebush swallowtail butterflies and imperial moths, as well as many other lepidoptera larvae. The soft wood is favored by woodpeckers for making holes, which later benefit other cavity nesting birds. Its lipid-rich fruit is eaten by Eastern Bluebirds, Red-Eyed Vireos, Wild Turkeys, Eastern Kingbirds, Great Crested Flycatchers, Northern Mockingbirds, Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers, Pileated Woodpeckers, Common Yellowthroats, and Eastern Phoebes. Mammals also eat sassafras fruit, and deer will browse the leaves and twigs.
In the wild, sassafras trees will form colonies from underground root systems; like aspens, all of the trees in a colony may come from the same parent. While this trait may be very attractive to wildlife and to owners of large lots, it can be tamed easily for smaller properties by cutting away the small suckers that appear near the parent tree.
Alternatively, the suckering tendency of sassafras can be optimized to help control erosion or to create hedges and screens, by allowing suckers to grow in a chosen direction and keeping the colony pruned to the desired height.
Sassafras foliage is eaten by the caterpillars of spicebush swallowtail butterflies and imperial moths, as well as many other lepidoptera larvae. By Famartin – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=139430836
Native bees will nest in cut sassafras stems, so if you do choose to cut the suckers, it is recommended to leave them 12 inches to 24 inches high for this purpose.
Sassafras trees can also be effective as specimen shade trees or in small groups. One author recommends combining sassafras with redbud trees, because the combination of their citron and cerise blooms is so striking. Underplanting the two species with golden alexanders, Jacob’s ladder, and Canada anemone would contribute to this colorful spring display.
All parts of the sassafras tree are pungently aromatic when bruised. Native Americans have used sassafras for many curative purposes, and its bark has been used for tea. Sassafras oil has also been used in soaps and fragrances. Its stem pith is used for filé, a thickening ingredient in Creole dishes like gumbo. Sassafras roots were originally used to flavor root beer, but since the chemical safrole, found in sassafras oil, has been deemed carcinogenic by the FDA, it has been banned from use in foods.
Resources
Books
Guy Sternberg with Jim Wilson, Native Trees for North American Landscapes From the Atlantic to the Rockies, Timber Press, 2004
Jared Rosenbaum, Wild Plant Culture A Guide to Restoring Edible and Medicinal Native Plant Communities, New Society Publishers, 2023
Websites
