Sassafras
Sassafras albidum
Three leaf shapes on one branch (oval, mitten and three-lobed) and the best fall color of any eastern native: orange, scarlet and plum on the same tree, with root beer in its bark.
- Type
- Tree · Perennial
- Botanical family
- Mixed / other
- Foliage color
- Green
- Sunlight
- Full sun to part shade
- Watering
- Low once established
- Soil
- Acidic, well-drained; poor sandy ground suits it
- Feeding
- Gentle all-organic
- USDA zones
- 4b–9a
- Frost tolerant
- Yes
- Plant out
- 14 days before the last spring frost
- Plant spacing
- 26 ft 3 in
- In-row spacing
- 19 ft 8 in
- Between rows
- 32 ft 10 in
- Square-foot density
- Not suited to SFG
- Root system
- Woody, shallow, wide and opportunistic
- Working depth
- 12–24 in
- Can reach
- 3.5 ft down where the soil allows
- Spread
- 98–131 ft across, about 3–4× the width of the plant
These roots go looking, and what they find is drains, soakaways, footings, paving and the border next door. Give it real distance from anything you would mind being lifted or blocked: the reach below ground is several times what the crown suggests.
Root suckers form a colony around the parent tree, which is how it grows in the wild and what makes it a poor choice beside a lawn or a border.
The habit is Sassafras’s own; the figures are what that habit usually comes to at this size, not a measurement of this species. Roots follow the soil either way: a compacted pan, a high water table or heavy clay stops them well short of any of it, and deep open ground lets them go further.
- When
- Young leaves for filé in spring and early summer; suckers cut any time they appear.
- What to look for
- Leaves picked young and green dry best. Root suckers a stride from the trunk mean the grove is beginning.
- How to harvest
- Pick young leaves, dry them fully and grind them to powder for gumbo filé. Mow or cut suckers at ground level if you want one tree rather than a colony.
- How often
- A handful of leaves as wanted; sucker patrol once or twice a season.
- Storing the crop
- Dried, ground leaves keep a year in a sealed jar. (The old root-bark tea is off the menu: safrole is a regulated carcinogen, which is why modern root beer is flavored artificially.)
- Japanese beetle Japanese beetles on the leaves in July
- Root & crown rot Root rot on heavy wet clay
- Iron chlorosis Iron chlorosis on limy soil; it wants acid ground
- Laurel wilt disease moving up from the Southeast is the one real threat to watch
Beneficial predators that hunt this plant's pests — grow their favourite flowers nearby to recruit them. companion plant
- Assassin bug ReduviidaeHunts Japanese beetle
A patient ambusher with a curved beak it drives into whatever it catches — caterpillars, beetles, bugs, and the occasional bee, so count it a generalist rather than a specialist. It will jab a careless finger too, so admire it and leave it be.
- Beneficial nematodes Steinernema & Heterorhabditis spp.Hunts Japanese beetle
Microscopic worms watered onto damp soil that hunt down soil-dwelling grubs and release a bacterium that kills them within days. Timing is the whole thing: warm, damp soil and a small target grub, which means late summer for most of what they are used against.
- Garden birds PasseriformesHunts Japanese beetle
Both things are true: birds strip your currants and a brood of blue tits takes several thousand caterpillars out of one fruit tree in a fortnight. Net what you must and welcome them everywhere else — a nest box near the apples is worth more than a spray.
- Praying mantis MantidaeHunts Japanese beetle
A sit-and-wait ambusher that snatches caterpillars, beetles, and anything else that wanders close — friend and foe alike, so count it a mixed blessing. Tall, structured plantings give it perches and egg-case anchors.
- Spined soldier bug Podisus maculiventrisHunts Japanese beetle
A predatory stink bug — same shield outline as the pest, but with a sharp spine at each shoulder and a beak it uses to spear caterpillars and beetle grubs. Learn the spines before you squash a shield bug, because this one is on your side.
- Tachinid fly TachinidaeHunts Japanese beetle
Bristly, house-fly-lookalike parasitoids that lay eggs on caterpillars, beetle grubs, and earwigs — the maggot consumes the host from within. Adults sip nectar from shallow umbels and daisies.
Sassafras roots flavored the original root beer, and the leaves, dried and ground, are filé powder, the thickener of Louisiana gumbo. It grows a deep taproot fast, so move it young or not at all.
The Cottage Garden Companion — the gardener's herbarium at cottagegardencompanion.com