If your bunghole needs plugging, you’re going to need a bung. And a beetle to whack that bung with. And to ensure that your beetle is up to the task of pounding bung after bung into cask after cask, it ought to be made from the sturdy wood of the beetlebung tree.
The whalers of old on Martha’s Vineyard knew that the wood of Nyssa sylvatica could be made into trusty mallets and pegs to cork their barrels of oil — because of the cross grains, it’s not an easy wood to split. Elsewhere, away from the sea and its beasts, this tough-wooded tree is known as sour gum, or black gum, or simply tupelo.
The first colors of fall in the canopy here often belong to N. sylvatica — the colony growing around Blackwater Pond in Provincetown has already begun to decorate the trail there.
