Sugar Hackberry
Celtis laevigata
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Sugar hackberry grows from southeastern Virginia to Florida, westward to central Texas and northeastern Mexico, and northward to Missouri and southern Illinois. Sugar hackberry grows in many soil conditions, but cannot tolerate flooding or over-saturation. It is shade tolerant.
Fruit: A 1/4 inch, deep purple drupe. Fruit appears in July-August, ripens in October, and persists through midwinter.
Flowers: A greenish white, insignificant flower. Male flowers are borne in clusters and female flowers are solitary. They bloom at the same time leaves appear between March and May.
Uses: The wood is used in furniture, flooring, and fence posts. Sugar hackberry is planted as an ornamental because it's resistant to urban pollution and has attractive fall foliage. The fruit is edible to humans.
Ethnobotany: The bark is used as a treatment for sore throats once cooked in traditional herbal medicine.
Importance to wildlife: The fruit is eaten by many animals.
The full sugar hackberry tree. Sugar hackberries grow to 60-100 feet tall.
The bark of a sugar hackberry. Bark is light gray and either smooth or warty.
A single leaf on a sugar hackberry. Leaves are 4-8 cm long, usually more than twice as long as wide, palmately veined, long pointed at the apex, unsymmetrical at the base, dark green above, paler below, and glabrous on both sides except for minute hairs along the margin.
The underside of a leaf, showing the palmate venation.
Leaf arrangement on a sugar hackberry. Leaves are simple, alternate, and two-ranked.
The bud of a sugar hackberry. Unlike common hackberry, the sugar hackberry bud is extremely small--1-3 mm long, closely appressed, and minutely hairy.
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