Dagnabbit, wwh. You are grandly misquoting me. I never told you black gums have spikes. If you can dig up my message to you, I wrote sweet gum. We have numerous sweet gum trees and black gum trees in Virginia. You mentioned to me black gum spikes and I told you a while back that they were sweet gum and not black gum. It is a terrible thing to be misquoted, but if you check our messages back and forth, you'll see I'm telling the truth here. I would never in a million years--till I lose my mind--call a sweet gum ball a black gum ball, espeically since there isn't a spiked black gum ball in all of Virginia.