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Planting
Days to maturity
Seasonal yields
Sow indoors · Direct sow · Transplant outdoors
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Plant · P-158
Tree Of Heaven
Ailanthus altissima
Tree Of Heaven grows fast on almost any ground - alkaline clay, urban pollution, drought - and is documented to reclaim genuinely contaminated sites where little else takes hold. Its leaves carry a chemical that stops other tree seedlings from establishing nearby, and its foliage's odor is strong enough to cause headaches and nausea in people working around it, while contact with cut wood can bring on skin rashes. It is also the preferred host of the spotted lanternfly, a pest that targets grapes and stone fruit, and it spreads on its own by both seed and root sprout - one tree can produce hundreds of thousands of seeds in a year, and cutting it down tends to trigger more root sprouts rather than fewer.
Record at a glance
Growing profile
- Sun
- Full Sun · Partial Sun
- USDA zone
- USDA 4–8
- Soil
- Sand · Silt · Loam · Clay
- Moisture
- Dry · Well-Drained · Moderate
Vertical layer
Canopy- Soil pH
- 4.1–7.9
- Plant type
- Deciduous Tree
- Mature height
- 40–60 ft
- Mature spread
- 15–30 ft
- Plant spacing
- 24–60 ft
- Root type
- Fibrous-shallow
- Spread pattern
- Both
Keep exploring
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Ulmus americana
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The deeper layer
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- Primary
- Locked ecological function
- Secondary
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- Byproduct
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Behind the record
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