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About Sassafras
Sassafras (Sassafras albidum) is a native deciduous tree known for its aromatic twigs, colorful fall leaves, and wonderfully variable leaf shapes. On the same tree, you may find simple oval leaves, mitten-shaped leaves with one side lobe, and three-lobed leaves that look like tiny green dinosaur footprints. This makes sassafras one of the most fun native trees to identify and color.
In early spring, small yellow to yellow-green flowers appear before or as the leaves emerge. Sassafras is usually dioecious, meaning male and female flowers are often found on separate trees. Female trees can produce dark blue fruits held on bright red stalks, creating one of the flashiest fruit displays of any small eastern tree.
The bark, roots, twigs, and leaves are aromatic when crushed, with a spicy scent often associated with old-fashioned root beer. Sassafras has a lively, woodland-edge personality: part shade tree, part wildlife plant, part autumn bonfire in leaf form. In a coloring page, it offers unique leaves, spring flowers, blue fruits, red fruit stalks, textured bark, and plenty of butterflies and birds.
Where Sassafras Grows
Sassafras is native to eastern North America, from parts of southern Canada through the eastern and central United States and south into Florida and eastern Texas. It commonly grows in open woods, forest edges, thickets, old fields, fencerows, roadsides, sandy woods, dry slopes, and disturbed areas.
This tree grows best in full sun to part shade and prefers acidic, well-drained soil. It can tolerate sandy soil, dry soil, and relatively poor sites once established. In sunny open places, sassafras may grow as a small to medium tree, while in shaded woods it may remain smaller and more shrub-like.
Sassafras often spreads by root suckers, sometimes forming colonies or small groves. This makes it useful in naturalized areas, wildlife edges, woodland gardens, hedgerows, and restoration plantings where a looser, more natural look is welcome. It pairs well with oaks, pines, serviceberry, black cherry, sumac, blueberries, goldenrods, asters, and native grasses.
Pollinators It Supports
Sassafras flowers are small, but they can attract early spring insects, including small bees, flies, and beetles. The flowers are not large nectar platforms like milkweed or Joe Pye weed, but they appear at a useful time of year when many insects are just becoming active. Good small pollinator examples to include in an illustration are mining bees such as Andrena species, sweat bees such as Lasioglossum species, and small hover flies.
Sassafras is especially important as a host plant for butterflies and moths. The best-known example is the spicebush swallowtail (Papilio troilus), whose caterpillars feed on sassafras and spicebush leaves. Sassafras is also listed as a host plant for the eastern tiger swallowtail (Papilio glaucus), Palamedes swallowtail (Papilio palamedes) in southern regions, and the promethea silkmoth (Callosamia promethea).
Female trees also produce fruits that are valuable to birds. The dark blue drupes can be eaten by eastern bluebirds, red-eyed vireos, wild turkeys, eastern kingbirds, great crested flycatchers, northern mockingbirds, yellow-bellied sapsuckers, pileated woodpeckers, common yellowthroats, and eastern phoebes. For a coloring page, sassafras pairs beautifully with a spicebush swallowtail caterpillar rolled inside a leaf, a promethea moth, an eastern tiger swallowtail, or a bird eating the blue fruits.
Coloring Tips
Color the leaves fresh green, medium green, or yellow-green in spring and summer. Make sure to include several leaf shapes on the same plant: oval, mitten-shaped, and three-lobed. In fall, sassafras leaves can turn brilliant yellow, orange, coral, scarlet, burgundy, and purple-red, so this is a wonderful tree for a warm autumn palette.
The flowers can be pale yellow, yellow-green, or soft chartreuse. The fruits are dark blue, blue-black, or deep purple-blue, held on bright red or reddish-pink stalks. This blue-and-red fruit combination is one of the prettiest details to emphasize.
The bark can be gray-brown, reddish-brown, or warm cinnamon-brown, becoming more furrowed with age. Young twigs may be green to reddish-brown. For the background, place sassafras along a woodland edge, sandy old field, sunny fencerow, pine-oak woodland, or autumn forest path. To show wildlife value, include a spicebush swallowtail, promethea silkmoth, eastern tiger swallowtail, eastern bluebird, or pileated woodpecker near the leaves or fruit.