Georgia Wildlife Federation

Resources < Wildlife Habitats < Native Plants < Native Plant Database < Liriodendron tulipifera

Tuliptree (Liriodendron tulipifera) is a host for Georgia’s state butterfly, the tiger swallowtail, and a very valuable timber tree. It’s a great shade tree and a great honey tree, and has been highly regarded for its medicinal value. Now aren’t you glad it’s so common? Tuliptree is found on moist, well-drained sites throughout Georgia and is native to 27 states.

Tuliptree is difficult to confuse with any other species because its features are so unique. First of all, it’s taller than most trees. In fact, it’s the tallest hardwood in eastern North America, reaching heights of up to 200 feet. It’s also one of our straightest trees, and its long, limb-free, column-like bole is unmistakable. The bark is fitting skin for a giant—gray and incredibly thick, with deep fissures and furrows. The leaf, flower, and fruit are so special that I’m giving each its own paragraph.

We’ll start with the leaf, which is shiny green in summer and golden in fall. It’s large (five to eight inches long and wide), with four to six pointy lobes. Some people think the outline of the leaf looks like a tulip, but what I see is a cat’s head; the top lobes are ears and the side lobes are whiskers. At tea parties my three-year-old niece, Sophie, and her friends like to use fresh-picked leaves as fans; I think the appeal is in the long petioles (leaf stalks), which make very convenient, graceful handles. Those long petioles also create a very pretty effect while the foliage is still on the tree. As naturalist and phrasemaker Donald Culross Peattie writes in his classic A Natural History of Trees, the leaves, “being more or less pendulous,” are “forever turning and rustling in the slightest breeze.”

The flowers appear in May and June, but they are usually so high up in the canopy that they are difficult to see in full detail. You have to wait ‘til one gets knocked to the ground to fully examine and admire it. Then you’ll find that each blossom is a sunny two-inch cup composed of six orange-splotched yellow-green petals. Inside the cup, numerous long creamy stamens are arranged in a spiraling fashion. Flowers are delicately scented and definitely tulip-like.

The flowers are followed by upright, cone-shaped bunches of samaras (dry, winged fruits). Chartreuse and lemony-smelling in summer, the cones turn brown and dry in fall, often persisting into winter. By mid-fall they start to shatter, and the samaras twirl down to the ground on the chilly breezes. The seeds are eaten by cardinals, purple finches, and gray squirrels.

Tuliptree has enormous wildlife value. The phloem is used by yellow-bellied sapsuckers, and the flowers are visited by ruby-throated hummingbirds. White-tailed deer browse on the twigs, while tuliptree silkmoth and tiger swallowtail caterpillars feed on the leaves. Cavities in old trees provide cover and nesting spots for woodpeckers, owls, nuthatches, wrens, titmice, squirrels, and raccoons.

Humans also put tuliptree to good use. Traditionally, Native Americans used the long, clear boles to build dugout canoes that could fit up to 20 passengers. Daniel Boone used a tuliptree canoe to transport his family down the Ohio River into Missouri in 1799, and it measured over 60 feet in length. Folk medicine employed all parts of tree, especially the roots. Root teas were brewed to treat rheumatism and fever and to wash burns and snakebites. Today, tuliptree is one of the most important southern hardwoods in the forest products industry and is used to make veneer, plywood, and paper pulp. Dark and delicately flavored, tuliptree honey is a gourmet treat.

Tuliptree performs best in deep, moist, fertile, well-drained soils that are slightly acidic. It is shade intolerant, a pioneer of rich, disturbed sites, and in the wild is often found along streams and bottoms and at the edges of fields. Transplant in spring. Tuliptree grows fast (up to three feet per year in youth), but unlike many other fast-growing species, it is also long-lived. Under the right conditions it can survive more than 300 years.