Wow, sweet gum must a lot less common in NY. I doubt anyone in Virginia has memories going back far enough to remember seeing sweet gum for the first time lol.
I do agree that nothing is useless, but some things do create more headache than apparent benefits in many situations. Some cattlemen also cut them down in droughts to feed livestock.
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Chinaberry has begun to show up in North Alabama and Tennessee. It is a serious problem in some areas near Selma Alabama. Birds eat the fruit and spread the seed.
tnhunter, I can’t entirely agree re Chinese Privet. It is invasive, mostly useless, but my bees make absolutely delicious honey from it.
Carolina Buckthorn is relatively rare in my area. I have one bush behind my house which I mostly ignore.
Mulberry is by far one of the most invasive of the commonly found trees in this area but it makes edible fruit so I don’t have any serious negatives to say about it.
I have a mix of pine and sweetgum on my land near Hamilton, AL I’ve been cutting out some of the more aggressive sweetgums but in areas with a good mix of pines, over time the pine trees shade out the sweetgum. Savannah loam is surprisingly good soil for pines.
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Crepe Myrtles are high on my list, as well. I believe it was them that introduced the fungal problems I ended up with - on my pomegranates. I had no fungal problems until we planted crepe myrtles along our driveway. And then both the myrtles and the pomegranates began showing evidence of disease.
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That’s funny - I don’t think I’ve ever seen one in New York. The one I saw was in DC 
Chinese tallow tree they are super invasive and fast growing. They can grow up in the middle of a blueberry bush and choke it off in a year. Not unusual to see growth spurts about 3 foot a year.
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Oh, I was exaggerating, it’s certainly not actually useless. Commercially, it’s one of the more important hardwoods in the south, and even though it’s a pain to split and dry, it’s still usable as firewood–we used it a lot when I was a kid just because there weren’t much else besides pines in the places we were getting firewood form.
But it’s a real weed try, it’s hard to control, it spreads like crazy, grows fast, and resprouts easily. The gumballs are a nuisance that just never goes away, and larger trees have a tendency to drop really big limbs on things you paid a lot of money for like cars and houses.
It’s a very good pioneer tree, and for a variety of reasons, it competes well (sweetgums are completely alone in their family, which might explain why they don’t have many disease or pest issues compared to say oaks), especially in the hot and humid parts of the South. In colder areas, it’s not nearly so annoying.
Haha, yeah, this is one of those examples that makes me think anyone self-described as a herbalist should be required to get a degree in chemistry.
This
is not this
Sure, a modern laboratory can use the first to make the second, through a very long and complicated multi-step process, but eating the first one won’t produce the second in your body any more than breathing in a fart will produce glyphosate in your body (methane is used to produce glyphosate).
Also, shikimic acid is already present in your body. Most microorganisms and plants produce it. It just is usually a temporary intermediary in some other pathway, so it’s not present in large amounts in most of them, sweetgum just happens to accumulate it to an extent in its seeds. But it’s not even the main source, the commercial source is start anise, which contains several times more and is much cheaper and easier to harvest.
Yeah, it’s limited to coastal areas mostly. Upstate NY has basically none of them.
Technically this shows it being more common in the north, but that’s an artifact of population density (more people means more people using the app means more observations)
It is pretty crazy that the species ranges from Canada to Nicaragua though.
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Exactly Chinabery spreads fast and suckers badly. The berries can be annoying as well. I would rather have mulberries which squish and stains. Where Chinaberry seeds are like Lego Jr. To step on.
I’m surprised that no one has listed Kudzu as hated. While it is not a tree but is a vine it is highly invasive. It can cover up a tree. I don’t have it, but it is near. Like to hear about it if you have it.
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Well my original post has been kind of ignored, I said hated tree which you choose to grow. So like a tree you have a love/hate relationship with. Problematic, hard to keep alive etc etc
That said everything else is still interesting and I’m shocked you’re the first to mention kudzu. It’s not in my area that I’m aware of however.
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Sweetgum 
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If we are talking vines, muscadine and smilax are the top of my list. “But the grapes are so good” said the birds that take them well before they are ripe. I have seen ripe grapes exactly once, and they were stripped clean in the 5 minutes it took for me to go to the house for a container.
I did recently find out that Smilax is sasaparilla. I learned that the North American smilax isn’t the official sasaparilla (that one is in Mexico) but they can be. Its something that I want to try to make, and if its good, that might change my opinion on the Smilax monster.
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My kudzu vines were in a cow pasture. Cows found it delicious… until they killed it.
Alas poor kudzu, cows got it!
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Seriously? You can do this? I’m so pumped…now I need to find pomegranate scions to graft onto crepe myrtles. Thanks for the tip Gkignt.
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Keifer pear! I got it for polination and it erupted with disease and infested my other pears and nearby cherries. I found out its so awful that its a tually banned from the whole country of Canada!! Funny you meantion this today. I actually had my husband dig it out this afternoon and hes gifting it to a neighbor. Good ridence!!! Im not giving it another year!
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I had this once along a fenceline. If i didnt mow regularly, it would come into the pasture. The fruit was awful.
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Not Kieffer; you’re thinking of Bradford - and all other callery pear selections that followed it.
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Yes, callery pear is highly invasive. It also has a wide range of resistance/susceptibility to fireblight. I’m growing a callery hybrid that makes 1 inch diameter fruit by the hundreds every year. It is one of the fireblight resistant trees. I hope over time to cross the high production traits into a larger and better flavored pear. I also have a callery with intense flame orange/red fall foliage. https://www.selectedplants.com/miscan/peartree.jpg
Last fall, I found a callery tree with bright yellow fall foliage. I’m going to take a look this year and decide if it is consistent enough to be worth saving.
I’m going to toss another questionable tree into the pot. Does anyone have trifoliate orange growing as an invasive? I know an area just south of Selma Alabama where trifoliate orange has become established and has totally overwhelmed all competition. It has formed a thicket that would stop a raging bull with 3 to 4 inch razor sharp thorns. It is the only plant I’ve seen that puts honeylocust to shame.
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not a tree but jap. knotweed is taking over old farmland everywhere and is near impossible to eradicate once established. once it’s on the shore of a water shed, spring ice beaks off canes and reroots downstream. the state has been battling it for 30 yrs with very little patches completely eradicated. the stuff just wont die!
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This red oak has to go, but nobody wants to cut it down. One branch broke off years ago and totalled the neighbor’s truck. Another branch broke off 1 1/2 years ago and damaged the roof. Every branch seems to be in danger of taking out a house or power lines. The trunk is over 5 feet across at the widest point and has a nice big burl knot behind the truck bumper. There does not seem to be any sign of rot in the tree, but every wind storm brings anxiety.
It basically looks like the Hanging Tree from every movie that has featured a Hanging Tree.
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A professional tree service with a crane can remove it.
A tree service took down a similar size oak in my yard a few years ago using a chainsaw with a 36 inch bar. It was nearly 5 feet across the stump. Once it was on the ground I cut it up and burned it. One tree was enough firewood for 2 years.
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