Sassafras

Any plan to dig, brew, or drink sassafras root, root bark, or 'sassafras tea' as a beverage or tonic - the once-common practice now discouraged for safety.

Not applicable as a plant ailment - this is a use caution: don't consume the root/bark. If someone has been consuming sassafras-root tea or tonic, discuss it with a doctor; commercial root beer uses safe safrole-free flavorings.

Grow sassafras for its beauty, aroma, and wildlife value, not for the root; enjoy the root-beer scent of a scratched twig without consuming the root. The dried LEAVES (file powder) are safrole-free and remain a legal seasoning.

Not a pest, but the reason this tree carries a caution: sassafras root and bark are rich in safrole, which the FDA banned as a food additive in 1960 as a possible carcinogen and liver toxin. The traditional homemade 'root beer,' sassafras tea, and root tonics are therefore no longer considered safe to consume. Handling the tree and enjoying its scent are completely safe - only ingesting the safrole-rich root/bark is the concern.

Sassafras is fully susceptible, and because it spreads by root suckers into connected clonal thickets, the fungus can move stem to stem through those shared roots and take a whole colony rather than one tree. Sassafras has also carried laurel wilt inland and north of the coastal redbay belt, so watch for it well beyond the Gulf and Atlantic plain. A sassafras that browns and holds its dead leaves out of season is not showing fall color - check the sapwood.

Sudden wilting of one limb or of the whole canopy, with the brown, dried leaves CLINGING to the tree instead of dropping - that is the signature that separates it from a slow root or drought decline. Peel the bark on a wilted limb and look for brown-to-black streaking in the sapwood. On the trunk and larger limbs, look for pinhole-sized beetle entry holes, often with a protruding toothpick of compacted sawdust or a fine frass tube. Wilt usually starts in one branch and runs through the tree fast. Mainly a concern in the Southeast, where the beetle is established.

There is no cure once a tree is infected. Report a suspected case to your state agriculture department or extension office - Florida and neighboring states run survey and response programs and quarantine the movement of laurel-family wood. The required response is fast removal: take the tree down promptly and chip or burn the wood ON SITE rather than hauling it away, since moving infested wood spreads the beetle. Grind the stump, chip fine, and watch nearby laurel-family trees closely.

There is no spray that protects a home tree. Keep trees vigorous, avoid wounding the trunk and roots, and above all do not move laurel-family wood or firewood - avocado, redbay, sassafras, and their relatives - because the beetle rides in cut wood, and moving it is how the disease jumps counties. Before planting a laurel-family tree in the Southeast, find out from your extension office whether laurel wilt has reached your county. Preventive fungicide injection exists, but it is an arborist-applied, repeated treatment for high-value individual trees, not a home measure.

A lethal fungal wilt (Raffaelea lauricola) carried by the tiny redbay ambrosia beetle, and the most destructive disease of laurel-family trees (Lauraceae) in the southeastern United States. The beetle bores into the trunk and limbs and introduces the fungus, which plugs the tree's water-conducting vessels, so a healthy mature tree can wilt and die in weeks to months instead of declining slowly over years. It has killed redbay and swampbay on a landscape scale across the Southeast and also attacks avocado, sassafras, spicebush, and pondspice - which is how it travels through woods and neighborhoods and into a yard. Susceptibility varies by host, but no laurel-family tree inside the beetle's range is immune.