Garden & avenue classics
Liquidambar
Liquidambar styraciflua
The liquidambar is the east's great autumn showoff. Where a claret ash commits to one colour, a single liquidambar runs purple, red, orange, gold and green all at the same time, often on the same branch. Camberwell and Canterbury gardens are full of them, planted for exactly that show.
How to spot a liquidambar
Leaves
A five to seven pointed star, glossy green through summer, arranged alternately along the twig. Crushed leaves have a sweet, resinous smell.
Bark & twigs
Grey and furrowed on the trunk, with distinctive corky ridges or wings along younger branches. Run a thumb along a twig and you'll feel them.
Fruit
Spiky round seed balls carried singly on stalks, dropping through autumn and winter. Barefoot lawn owners know them well.
Form
Neatly pyramidal when young, broadening to a tall oval crown of 20 metres or more in old gardens.
Autumn
The multi-colour crown is the fastest way to name one from a distance, and colour often holds into early winter.
Where you'll see it around the south east
Everywhere in the older gardens of Camberwell, Canterbury, Glen Iris and Kew, and on nature strips across Boroondara. They were a default garden tree for decades, so many now stand close to houses, sheds and pools built long after they were planted.
Worth knowing
Liquidambar means 'liquid amber', named for the fragrant gum the American species yields when cut. The autumn display is genetic roulette: seed-grown trees each settle on their own mix of colours, which is why neighbouring liquidambars rarely match.
Easily confused with
Maples carry their similar leaves in opposite pairs and lack the corky twig ridges. London planes have flaking camouflage bark and chained seed balls. Japanese maples are far smaller with more deeply cut leaves.
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