Sassafras

Size, growth and what to expect

Sassafras is quick to start. It grows fast, and root sprouts on a good open site have grown 12 feet in 3 years. That figure is for sprouts from an established root. Our growth estimator models a young tree as a fast grower, at nearly three feet a year. It reaches 30 to 60 feet with a crown 25 to 40 feet wide, and mature trunks average only 6 to 8 inches through. Trees average about 69 years and can live up to 500. One cored to its center was at least 190 years old. Only a tiny share of trees is ever dated this way, so older ones may exist.

Seed production begins as trees approach 10 years and peaks between 25 and 50, with a good crop every 1 or 2 years. The dark blue fruit is a third to a half inch long on a red stalk, and bluebirds, vireos, flycatchers, quail and turkeys eat it. White sassafras, its other name, comes from albidum, whitish, for the pale undersides of the leaves.

It grows wild from southwestern Maine to central Michigan, southwest to Missouri and east Texas, and east to central Florida, as a pioneer of old fields.

How to grow Sassafras

Sassafras wants full sun or light shade and well-drained soil on the acid side. Dry sand and gravel suit it, moist sandy loam grows it fastest, wet clay rots its roots and limestone yellows it. In shade it thins and dies back. Give it 20 feet from the house and a colony room to run. Set trees 25 to 40 feet apart.

Saplings ship bare-root or potted. Plant it small and dormant, from leaf fall to bud swell, and never move it again; the deep early root resents it. Dig a hole wider than the roots and deep enough for the taproot, flare at grade, native soil back in, mulch off the stem. Seed needs about 120 days of cold, damp stratification. Clean off the pulp and sow it a quarter to half an inch deep in a screened, mulched bed late in fall, since early sowing sprouts before winter. For spring, refrigerate it in damp sand four months first. The oily seed keeps a year or two cold, not much longer.

Water weekly the first summer if rain is short; then it stands drought. Deer browse it in every season and rabbits strip the bark in winter, so cage it three or four years and keep mulch thin against voles. Prune only dead wood, in winter; to keep one trunk, mow or cut the suckers as they come.

Growth is fast, quickest in sun. Only females fruit, and a seedling shows which it is only when it flowers, at four years in the open at the earliest and usually nearer ten, so plant three to five. Expect suckers. Where laurel wilt has arrived a tree can die in weeks and there is no treatment: cut and chip any tree that wilts suddenly in summer, and never move firewood.