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About Black Tupelo
Black tupelo (Nyssa sylvatica), also called black gum, sour gum, or simply tupelo, is a native deciduous tree famous for its glossy leaves, dark blue fruits, and spectacular fall color. In autumn, the foliage can turn scarlet, crimson, orange, gold, purple, or deep wine-red, sometimes all on the same tree. It is one of those forest trees that seems to keep a secret stash of sunset in every leaf.
The leaves are simple, alternate, and often oval to slightly broader near the tip, with smooth or lightly wavy edges. In spring, the tree produces small greenish-white flowers that are easy to miss but valuable to insects. Female trees can produce dark blue to bluish-black fruits, technically drupes, which ripen in late summer or fall.
Black tupelo is a beautiful subject for a coloring page because it has year-round interest: spring flowers, glossy summer foliage, dramatic fall leaves, dark fruits, textured bark, and wildlife visitors. Older trees may develop natural hollows, making them important shelter trees as well as food trees.
Where Black Tupelo Grows
Black tupelo is native to much of eastern North America, with a range extending from southern Canada through the eastern and central United States and into parts of Mexico. It grows in a wide variety of habitats, including upland forests, dry woods, bottomlands, swamp margins, savannas, wet depressions, stream edges, and acidic woodland soils.
This tree is adaptable, but it often prefers moist, acidic, well-drained soil. It can tolerate poorly drained soil, occasional standing water, and some drought once established. It usually grows best in full sun to part shade, and sunny conditions often produce the brightest fall color.
In natural landscapes, black tupelo may grow with oaks, hickories, maples, sweetgum, pine, beech, dogwood, and other eastern forest trees. In gardens, it can be used as a specimen tree, shade tree, wildlife tree, or native alternative to ornamental shade trees. Because it develops a deep root system and can be difficult to transplant, it is best planted young and left to settle in like a long-term forest citizen.
Pollinators It Supports
Black tupelo flowers are small, but they can be valuable nectar sources for bees and other spring insects. The tree is sometimes described as a honey plant, and honey bees, western honey bees (Apis mellifera), may visit the flowers. Native bees such as mining bees (Andrena species) and sweat bees (Lasioglossum species) are also good examples of the kinds of small spring bees to show visiting the flowers, though exact species vary by region.
Black tupelo also supports caterpillars. It is a larval host for the striking Hebrew moth (Polygrammate hebraeicum), whose pale caterpillars feed on black gum leaves. It can also support the false underwing moth (Allotria elonympha) and other moth species that use tupelos or mixed hardwood trees. These caterpillars help feed birds, especially during nesting season when songbirds need soft insect food for their young.
The fruits are extremely valuable to wildlife. Birds such as wood thrushes, American robins, gray catbirds, northern flickers, pileated woodpeckers, northern mockingbirds, and cedar waxwings may eat the dark fruits. Mammals including black bears, foxes, raccoons, opossums, and white-tailed deer also use the tree for fruit, browse, or shelter. For a coloring page, black tupelo pairs well with a honey bee, Hebrew moth, caterpillar, wood thrush, cedar waxwing, or black bear near fallen fruits.
Coloring Tips
Color the summer leaves glossy deep green, blue-green, or medium green, with lighter green along the veins. For a fall version, use scarlet, crimson, orange, gold, burgundy, purple-red, and rusty red. Black tupelo is famous for intense autumn color, so this is a great page for bold leaf shading.
The fruits are dark blue, bluish-black, or purple-black, often with a slight pale bloom. Add them in small clusters on thin stalks. The flowers, if shown, can be pale green, cream, or greenish-white.
The bark is gray to dark gray-brown and becomes blocky or ridged with age. Use darker gray in the cracks and lighter gray on the raised bark plates. For the background, place black tupelo in an upland forest, swamp margin, woodland edge, or autumn wildlife scene. Add oaks, maples, ferns, leaf litter, a stream edge, or a few birds eating fruit. To show wildlife value, include a Hebrew moth, honey bee, wood thrush, cedar waxwing, or American robin among the branches.