Sassafras

A friend reminded me of how wonderful sassafras trees are in a FB post -- her sassafras tree is now perfectly framed in her view out the kitchen door, a gift via a native plant collection won some years ago.

It prompted revisiting my Natural Gardening posts over the years about sassafras (there are many), and reminded me of how the progeny of our sassafras trees in Clemson have enriched our landscape here in the mountains of Western North Carolina.

Our sassafras trees came from an across the street Upstate South Carolina neighbor.  Sassafras seedlings and offshoots transplant easily when small; our neighbor across the street had many.

 

We transplanted a number to our landscape in Clemson, and after they became large enough, their seedling progeny were abundant; many were transplanted up to our landscape here in Asheville. 

 

I'm still enjoying one out the upstairs window currently (there were two, but one succumbed last year to some sort of root pathogen, encouraged by double the amount of rainfall than normal).

This photo is from November 8, 2017.  Sadly, the one on the right was the one that died.  The one on the left is still fine.

From the upstairs window

Sassafras was the inspiration for my Inktober, Day 28 drawing, too.