The sun sets behind the seed pod of a sweetgum tree. (Photo by Art Smith)

When I was a child, my dad planted a sweetgum tree in our Florida backyard. The tree quickly grew in the sandy soil and became a great tree to climb. The many branches provided easy-to-reach “rungs” on which I could climb higher than the house.

Decades later I had my own house in western Washington County, and I decided to remove a small fishpond next to my back deck after my wife and I had children. The pond presented a hazard to childhood, we thought, and we took it out.

The removal left a big hole in the ground, and I thought the best way to fill it was to drop a tree in the hole.

Naturally, I chose my favorite tree of my own youth, the sweetgum, and dropped a healthy specimen in the hole.

The sweetgum is a beautiful tree with large leaves that turn into a lively display of color in the fall. It is because of this that the tree was chosen by many communities as an ideal tree to be planted in parks and along streets several decades ago. It grows as a native plant throughout the southeast. Its natural range does not extend as far as our area.

Bill McKinney, whose family owned The Marietta Times for generations, was one of several citizens serving on the Marietta Tree Commission around this time. On the advice of an arborist, he recommended to the commission and to the city that some of the trees be planted around town be of a sweetgum variety supposed to be free of the annoying seed ball produced by the trees.

More than 200 of the trees were planted along streets and in parks.

As the trees matured into lovely shade trees, the arborist was proven wrong. They produced spiked seed balls that are the downfall of the tree, and began dropping them on streets and sidewalks all over town.

Thousands of the balls drop every year, and they can drop at any time of the year. Muskingum Park has a whole line of mature sweet gum along the river right next to the River Trail near the parking lot at the Putnam Bridge.

Several near the Post Office on Front Street not only drop the balls on the sidewalk, but the species’ roots grow very close to the surface, which has likely led to the uneven sidewalk.

The city no longer plants the trees, but there are still scores of them dropping the balls all over town.

Meanwhile back at the ranch, I mean my house, I am still dealing with the childhood memory I planted next to the deck.

It drops hundreds of the seeds every year. It also turns the white benches underneath it green. It is a nuisance tree in the small arboretum that is my yard. Fortunately, unlike the city of Marietta, I have just two, not 200 of them of which to deal.

Art Smith is online manager of The Marietta Times and The Parkersburg News and Sentinel. He can be reached at asmith@mariettaTimes.com.