What Is the Tree Blazing Scarlet Before Everything Else in Fall? Identifying Black Gum (Black Tupelo)

It happens every year, and it always looks a little startling: the woods are still deep summer green, the maples have not even thought about turning, and then one tree — or one branch, or even a single limb — suddenly flares up in brilliant scarlet, as if someone flipped a switch weeks ahead of schedule. More often than not, that early torch of red is a black gum (Nyssa sylvatica), also known as black tupelo, sour gum, or pepperidge. It is one of the first trees in eastern North America to turn, blazing red, orange, and purple in late summer and early fall long before its neighbors, and its glossy leaves make the color especially intense. Here is how to identify the tree behind the year’s first real burst of fall color.

How to Identify a Black Gum

Black gum is a medium-to-large deciduous tree, and a handful of features make it recognizable in any season:

• The leaves: simple, oval to teardrop-shaped, 2 to 5 inches long, with smooth (untoothed) edges and a glossy, almost waxy dark-green surface that turns brilliant scarlet, orange, and purple in fall
• The early color: it is one of the very first trees to turn each year, often blazing red in late summer and September while everything around it is still green — frequently one branch at a time
• The bark: on mature trees, dark gray-to-brown bark broken into blocky, chunky ridges that look strikingly like alligator hide — one of the best year-round tells
• The branching: short, roughly horizontal branches coming off the trunk at wide angles, giving the tree a distinctive layered, tiered silhouette
• The fruit: small, oval, blue-black berries (drupes) about a half-inch long, hanging in loose clusters of a few on long stalks, ripening September into October

A tree turning fiery red weeks before anything else, with glossy smooth-edged oval leaves, blocky "alligator" bark, and small blue-black berries, is almost certainly black gum — the season’s early warning that fall is on the way.

Why It Turns So Early

The early color is the black gum’s signature, and it is a real phenomenon, not a trick of the light. Like other trees, black gum stops making green chlorophyll as days shorten, revealing and building red and purple pigments beneath — but it simply begins the process earlier than most of its neighbors, sometimes in August. Trees under stress, on poorer or drier sites, or getting strong sun often flare first, and it is common to see a single branch turn scarlet while the rest of the crown is still green. The glossy leaf surface makes the color look especially vivid and lacquered. Because of this show, black gum is also a prized landscape and street tree, planted specifically for its dependable, early, intense fall color.

When one tree in the still-green woods suddenly glows scarlet in late summer, it is usually a black gum — the first to announce that the season is turning.

A Key Tree for Wildlife

Black gum is one of the most valuable wildlife trees in the eastern forest. Its blue-black berries are high in fat and eagerly eaten in fall by migrating birds — thrushes, robins, woodpeckers, wood ducks, and many others — as well as by foxes, raccoons, and other mammals fueling up for the cold. Its early spring flowers are a famous nectar source for honeybees, producing the prized "tupelo honey" of the Southeast. Old black gums are also among the longest-lived hardwoods in the East, and their trunks frequently hollow out with age, creating dens and cavities used by everything from bees to owls to raccoons. It is a quietly important tree hiding behind that flashy fall color.

Black Gum vs. Other Early-Red Trees

A few other trees and shrubs also turn red early and get confused with black gum. Red maple turns red early too, but its leaves are lobed and toothed, not smooth-edged ovals. Sourwood, another early-red tree, has longer, finely toothed leaves and dangling sprays of white flowers earlier in summer. Staghorn sumac and Virginia creeper both go scarlet early, but sumac has long compound leaves with many leaflets and fuzzy red cone-shaped fruit clusters, and Virginia creeper is a climbing vine with leaves divided into five leaflets. If the tree has simple, glossy, smooth-edged oval leaves and blocky alligator bark, black gum is your answer.

Not sure whether that early splash of scarlet is a black gum, a red maple, or a sourwood? Photograph a leaf, the bark, and the overall shape and let Spotter help you identify the tree — so you can name the one that always turns first.