![]() Florida pioneers called the gumbo limbo the “living fence.” They found that almost any branch could be stuck in the ground and it would grow. Natives would use this sap as a bird-lime, a trap for small birds. The gumbo limbo has a very thick and sticky sap. During periods of drought, the tree responds by dropping leaves, but otherwise remains green year-round. It is a fast-growing tree that does not mind moderate amounts of salt spray or our hard, calcium-laden soils. The gumbo limbo can be found in South and Central America, the Caribbean and South Florida. Its red, peeling bark has earned it the nickname “the tourist tree,” because of the resemblance to our visitors who don’t remember to apply and reapply their sunscreen. Gumbo limbo is one of the most recognizable trees in the tropical hardwood hammock of the Florida Keys. However, in the days when they were carved from wood, most of them were made from gumbo limbo, Bursera simaruba. Gumbo limbo is a member of Bursaraceae, the family of plants from which frankincense and myrhh are derived.These days, most merry-go-round horses are made from molded fiberglass and plastic. Model airplane enthusiasts know gumbo limbo as balsawood. In the days before plastics, gumbo limbo was used to carve carousel horses for merry-go-rounds. The Seminoles carved medicine bowls from the wood, which is both light weight and soft. In Mayan mythology, gumbo limbo is the "good" counterpart to the "evil" of black poisonwood. Gumbo limbo has been used to treat dysentery and yellow fever. The "tea" is drunk for backaches, colds, flu and urinary tract infections. Strips of peeling bark are boiled and used topically for sunburn, as mentioned, insect bites, sores and rashes. It's easy to grow from seeds, but most commonly it's grown from cuttings, which can be as large as a foot thick.Īs noted earlier, gumbo limbo is used medicinally. It easily adapts to urban environments and is used in parking lot islands and in highway medians, but it does require room and the roots will rise through the ground. In Florida, gumbo limbo is used in landscaping as both a shade tree and as a specimen planting. The canopy also provides cover for sundry critters. ![]() Kingbirds and flycatchers are attracted to the berries and the dingy purplewing butterfly uses gumbo limbo as one of its hosts. Green, triangular berries replace the flowers, turning red when ripe - in about a year. It produces clusters of greenish-yellow flowers in winter and spring, but the blooms hardly qualify as showy. You can see in the picture above that the crowns of these gumbo trees are on the sparse side. Gumbo limbo is semideciduous, meaning it drops its leaves but not all at one time. ![]() The leaves are compound, with long and relatively narrow leaflets that are arranged opposite each other. It will do well in poor, sandy soil but also thrive where the ground is rich in nutrients. It is a common element in coastal hammocks, the best known and easiest to identify of the tropical hardwood trees. The trunk can have a diameter of one to three feet, and there are usually at least four major branches radiating off the trunk and originating near the ground. ![]() More commonly, gumbo limbo will top out at 25 to 40 feet. The tree can be rather stout, sometimes exceeding 60 feet tall, with a crown just as wide. Florida is the only state in the union where it grows, according to the U.S. Gumbo limbo is native to South Florida, found as far north as Pinellas and Brevard counties, through the Caribbean to Central and South America. The irony is that the same peeling bark is used by some to heal sunburned skin - and other dermatological conditions. It's also the source of one of its common names, the tourist tree, so called because red bark is constantly peeling, just like the skin of sunburned tourists. It gives the tree much of its eye appeal (we couldn't resist the pun, but it's still true), is an important element in many traditional medicine cabinets and makes the tree easy to identify. Gumbo limbo, Bursera simaruba, is all about its peeling, coppery red bark.
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