Sugarberries are Hackberries with a Southern Accent
Sugarberries like to be near water and that’s why it caught my eye as I coasted by: It was growing on top of a dry hill.
Part of my approach to plants is to answer the questions raised by I.T.E.M., Identification, Time of year, Environment, and Method of Preparation. If you can’t satisfactorily answer them all then you might have the wrong plant. This surgarberry was environmentally out of place. I had seen such a thing once before with a sugarberry and you have to figure out why. It is simply good form to do so, and safe foraging.
Sugarberries — Celtis laevigata (SELL-tiss lee-vih-GAY-tuh )– like moisture. You’ll often find a stand of them near rivers. The last time I found a stand out of place they were growing near an irrigation canal. This time there was no canal. The Sugarberry was struggling with two Black Cherries for one spot, and winning. There was a swale nearby but on the top of the hill it was more for aesthetic reasons than practical. Then I saw the lawn irrigation head nearby. The tree was near a large, long-term business and daily watering was enough to make it think it was living in a wetter spot. Probably a bird dropped a seed while visiting a young cherry and the rest is botanical history.
Sugarberries, called hackberries outside of the South, were prized among people everywhere, New World and Old, though I don’t see how. They are big trees that can grow to 100 feet. The berries are small, sparse, and usually way out of reach. They have been praised since ancient times. Homer, the 900 BCE blind poet of ancient stories that shaped the Greek culture, spoke of them. He said one taste of the hackberry in a foreign land was enough to make a man never want go home again. Honestly, that’s an exaggeration. They are sweet and delicious but a huge amount of work would be involved to get even a cup of them. Perhaps natives everywhere trimmed the tree short and husbanded it.
The berry is just about the same size as chokecherry but the stone is larger. Inside the stone is a kernel. The pulp around the stone is about 10 times thicker than the pulp on a cabbage palm berry which is paint thin, so think ten layers of paint… read not a lot. This is a trail side nibble when in reach. However, the Native Americans had a different idea. Some would grind up the entire berry, stone, kernel and all, and make a paste out of it, either to bake in a fire or to add with fat and parched corn to make a gruel. Others removed the pulp, eating that separately. Then they lightly dried the kernel and cracked it. The inner kernel was considered a delicacy and the outer shell was ground up and used as a spice, usually on meat. The stone can be eaten raw and they also store well in oil. The entire berry is high in calcium, can be up to 20% protein, and has a good amount of phosphorus as well. It also has a high amount of fat and fiber.
How the tree got its name is a bit of a story. Only in the South are they called Sugarberries. Elsewhere they are Hackberries. That word came via Scottish from the names of some northern Scandinavia cherry trees that mean hag, or old woman. How the name of cherry trees got to be associated with the Celtis is anyone guess, though the fruit do resemble choke cherries and the tree is considered by some to be a ‘witch” tree. My guess is because the bark of the species is usually warty in patches it might have reminded folk of an old face in olden times. That warty bark is one of its identifying characteristics (and in the southwest of North America some hackberries also have thorns.) Don’t confuse the Sugarberry with the Toothache Tree which has very aromatic, medicine-smelling leaves and thorns. The Sugarberry does not.
Celtis is the ancient Greek name for a lotus with sweet berries, and was used by Pliny. Laevigata means smooth, and most of the sugarberry’s bark is smooth but there are always tell-tale corky warts, without thorns. It is interesting that English speakers would refer to the tree as the Sugarberry and the Greeks, a world and language away, call their tree, the C. australis, the Honeyberry. Clearly the dry sweetness impresses people.
While the C. laevigata is the common species in the lower half of the United States, there are several species, many of them edible, and found throughout North American and the world. Check out the species nearest you. Most hackberries like highlands, the sugarberry the low lands. Oh, It is a common host for mistletoe, is a good candidate for bonsai, and like the black walnut its leaf litter discourage growth of other plants.
And at Emerson Point Preserve, Palmetto, Fl., there is a “sugarberry” with teeth on the leaves. Current guess is that it is a “Japanese Sugarberry.”
Green Deane’s “Itemized” Plant Profile
IDENTIFICATION: Leaves alternate along the stem, medium to dark green, 2 to 4″ twice as long as wide, oval, serrated only on upper half of leaf, asymmetrical (lop-sided) three prominent veins, leaf spots and galls common, wigs zig-zaggy. Leaves turn yellow in the fall. Flowers greenish-yellow in spring. Fruit a green berry turning to orange, red or dark purple. Branches droop. Gray bark has patches of corky warts.
TIME OF YEAR: Fruits late summer, fall
ENVIRONMENT: Likes full sun and prefers moist rich soil.
METHOD OF PREPARATION: Ripe fruit pulp raw or cooked. Stone and inner kernel raw or cooked, stone shell ground up as seasoning, kernel roasted as a delicacy, entire berry pulp and seed crushed and cooked.
What would you recommend using to grind up Sugarberries? A mortar and pestle? A grain mill?
They are quite fragile. A motar and pestale works well as does a coarse grain mill. Personally I use my teeth.
I am in Texas and have eaten quite a few of our common variety, which I believe is the C. laevigata. They are pretty hard here, however, and I wouldn’t doubt that they could chip a tooth. That’s why I was wanting to grind them up, so that I could eat more of them without damaging my teeth.
What do they taste like raw?
They mild and sweet.
We have an enourmous sugarberry tree. Our arborist said it is also known as an anacua or anaqua tree. They mentioned that it is commonly mistaken for hackberry, but not the same thing. I picked some berries this summer and froze them. I just got around to making jelly from it, and it’s delicious. Our neighbor keeps bees and their honey definitely tastes of the tree, which is fun! The bees love the tree.
How do you make jelly from sugarberries?
Can the hackberry be tapped for syrup? Just curious and hoping to find something I can tap just for fun.
Cheers,
Did you ever find out if you can? I’ve been wondering. The closest info I’ve yet found was a comment in a permaculture forum about someone overhearing some elderly gentlemen talk about tapping hackberries when they were young. I might try it some year just for fun!
I use my teeth, too. I love these fruit. I want to plant some, and try pruning them to make harvest easier.
These are probably not called Hackberry in the South because there’s another tree we call Hackberry, which has small spiky “balls” that fall off the tree and hurt your feet when barefooted. Don’t know what the official name is.
What you call “hackberry” is usually called by southerners Sweet Gum. The tree I mentioned is called by botanists and non-botanist as either Hackberry or Sugarberry.
We call sweetgum trees sweet gums. We call hackberry trees sweetgums.
Lived in the south my entire life. Grandfather had a sawmill, and now I run it. I have never met a person that called a sweet gum a hackberry, nor have I met more than 5 people to ever use the term sugarberry.
The history and nutrition of this genus is the most interesting of all to me. I live in southern Illinois and I have tried about 20 trees within 2-3 miles from my house and they feel like they will break your teeth so I planted some Celtis australis and they are much better than my locals. I just read on another site that Celtis australis leaves are eaten. Do you know anything about this being true and also if it is true with species native to America?
Appreciate your research into the word origin of “hackberry,” Green Deane. That’s the first time I ever heard that. My natural history professor told that it was good at suppressing coughs, or “hacks.” Likely an assumption on his part. Of course hackberries and sugarberries are not really berries. They are drupes. Sam Thayer’s book, “Nature’s Garden: A Guide to Identifying, Harvesting, and Preparing Edible Wild Plants,” has a nicely written chapter, “Hackberry/Sugarberry,” pages 123-134. He describes how to make a milk from the kernels. Sounds delicious!
Hackberry trees are considered junk trees in the area I live in. They are a nuisance. At times there is a market for them in railroad ties but beyond that, they are useless except for firewood. And only then if they are burned within the same year they are cut. They tend to rot quickly.
Sugarberries is not a term commonly used in locally to describe this tree. Always described as a hackberry. They have the rough bark you described and the same leaf pattern. The berries are enjoyed by birds but felt to be too much trouble (and too small) to be of much value with regard to eating. This tree can grow practically anywhere. Near creeks or on hillsides. Not many are seen at the highest elevations but they grow profusely on plateaus of 1000 to 1500 ft elevation.
Sweet Gum trees grow quickly and reach heights of 150 ft. or more. Often, they may be the largest trees in the forest. These are also sold for railroad ties. They are not good for anything else that I have ever seen. They also rot quickly once upon the ground. The spiked balls they shed in the autumn make them also a nuisance if they happen to be in or near your yard. Like the Bradford Pear, there should be a Sweet Gum Eradification Society to keep this tree in check!
Sweetgum trees are native, unlike Bradford Pears. Not sure why you’d eradicate them.
Bob,
If you’ve ever had one growing in your yard, you would understand. The spiked balls of a sweet gum tree can roll beneath your feet and cause you to have a nasty fall. Especially, if they fall on a hillside. I have numerous trees growing in my yard and they make it hazardous to walk. They also grow profusely from sprouts and it becomes a never ending battle to keep them from taking over. They grow quickly and starve out the sunlight of other more useful trees like poplar, hickory, oak and walnut. Setting aside these negatives, the trees are beautiful trees and the leaves turn a rusty deep red in the autumn.
Sugarberries are not hackberries, although they are both Celtis. Hackberries are Celtis occidentalis, not Celtis laevigata.
I’m surprised to hear it is considered a nuisance tree by some. It is extremely windproof, surviving both hurricanes and tornadoes, so a great tree for “tornado alley” where I live. it is also host to the Mourning Cloak, Tawny Emperor, and Hackberry Emperor butterflies, along with several other species of insects. It is an excellent source of wildlife food throughout fall and into the winter. It is also a great tree for coppicing for firewood, and in a coppiced form the fruit is more easily harvested.
Commmon names are used loosely. You, or what publication you have, might make the distinction other people and or publications do not.
Corinna, greeting from another resident of tornado alley!
I have many sugarberry trees in my yard. I think they’re really nice trees. I planted some milkweed and have seen butterflies but it hasn’t occurred to me that perhaps they are coming for the trees! Thanks for some insight. 🙂
Thanks for a great post, Green Deane! I have many hackberries. It’s wonderful to know more about my own backyard. I really appreciate all the information you put together.
It’s funny how the miracle plant of one era is a nuisance a short while later.
Sugarberries also seem to be very juglone tolerant. Last week I cut down dozens or sugarberries and mulberries that were growing within 5 or 10′ of a giant black walnut tree, where many plants won’t. Based on what you said about the leaf litter, it makes a lot of sense. I have many pecans and hackberries shading my yard. I mostly have vining plants. I even had a Mexican cucumber and many plantagos make their way to my yard last summer and I’m very much hoping it returns because I love them. My neighbor refers to it as “the jungle” which I see as a compliment. 🙂
I hope you’re safe and well and eating the weeds.
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Does anyone use any part of this tree medicinally or for tinctures?
Yes, I use the leaves and berries as a nutritional supplement. The leaves and berries are dried and then ground into a powder, and filled into 00 capsules. The calcium molecules in the hackberry are exceptionally healthy for humans; I carefully eliminated all foods in my diet that had commercially processed calcium molecules and supplement instead with the hackberry. The result is that my teeth are regrowing all the dental filling (but not the enamel), my bone density is much stronger in my 60s than it was in my 40s, my eyesight has perfectly cleared up (no floaters), my hypertension has abated, and my constipation has gone away. These are all benefits of having the right kind of calcium in your body.
I became interested in the hackberry healing qualities after I burned an old house that was partially under a 40 ft hackberry tree. The branches were burned and I fully expected that at least half the tree would die. To my surprise, the tree healed itself from the burns and grew new bark over the burned bark and then produced healthy leaves and fruit the following year. Within five years it was impossible to tell the tree had ever been burned as it was completely healed, and those once burned branches are now just as healthy and productive as the rest of the tree.
I have noticed that in the 25 years I have lived with this tree, it has never dropped any large branches after storms like so many other trees do. This is a good thing because I built my new house underneath this hackberry tree to benefit from its shade. Although the branches make a groaning noise during high winds (like the Ents in Lord of the Rings), I feel very safe within the range of the hackberry, and enjoy their tree sounds when the wind picks up.
After researching the nutritional content of the tree, I began taking a daily supplement of the powdered leaves and berries, and I too have since experienced wonderful regeneration of my bones, teeth, and nerves (including the eyes and brain), which are heavily dependent on good quality calcium nutrition.
I have since began propagating the tree on my property so that I could more easily harvest the leaves and berries from smaller bushes.
The hackberry tree has far more health benefits than it is given credit for, and I can see why early civilizations prized the hackberry in their diet. You don’t need a college education to know when certain foods in your diet are beneficial for your health.
I grounded some hackberries and boiled them with water, a cinnamon stick and cloves. I strained them through cheese cloth and enjoyed myself a lovely fall warm drink. To my suprise, my heartburn was completely gone. I am 25 weeks pregannt which made me do a little more research because nothing has really worked from heartburn. I’ve read that tanctures have been used to regulate menstruation and induce abortions. Perhaps not the best berry to consume in large cuantities during pregnancy? I now drink one or two sips when y heartburn is taking over me and the relief is instant!
To me some berrys taste like sweet tea.
Since I suffer from the conditions the Sugarberry seem to improve, and I have many sweet gum trees, I intend to replace some with Sugarberries and try them out. Thanks for all the keen sharing and insights.
Are the seeds of both C. occidentalis and C. laevigata edible? I have laevigata growing around me and all the info I can find on the seeds is for occidentalis. Nobody I know has tried the seeds for either.
Thank you!
Greetings!
The Sugarberries here in Georgia seem a bit larger then what most Hackberries seem to have. I will post some pictures on my blogspot as I found some trees today that were loaded with a bumper crop of larger unripe berries. In fact that had confused me as I was aware of the small size of Hackberries elsewhere. I am guessing it is a mutation much like seen in other fruit. Where we end up with a cultivar or variety name. Literally with these, you can pick a cup just from the tip of one branch. Thanks for all your work on the website!