Sassafras fruits

The sassafras trees in our garden are some of my favorites -- my gardening companion planted four of them early on. We've got healthy young trees now, both a male and female in the front and back. We found them at a regional nursery, now gone, that grew a lot of native plants.

Sassafras is a great native (eastern U.S.) tree with wonderful fall color, lovely spring flowers, and interesting leaf shapes. Only the female trees produce fruits, of course, but they're favorites of fruit-eating birds, and usually disappear quite rapidly. The tree near the satellite garden was loaded with dark purple fruit last weekend. Now, there's only one left.