The Velvet, or Staghorn, Sumac

Teacher’s Story

The sumacs with flame leaves at half-mast, like wildfire spread over the glade;
Above them, the crows on frayed pinions move northward in ragged parade.

HE sumacs, in early autumn, form a “firing line” along the borders of woodlands and fences, before any other plant but the Virginia creeper has thought of taking on brighter colors. No other leaves can emulate the burning scarlet of their hues. The sumacs are a glory to our hills; and sometime, when Americans have time to cultivate a true artistic sense, these shrubs will play an important part in landscape gardening. They are beautiful in summer, when each crimson “bob” (a homely New England name for the fruit panicle) is set at the center of the bouquet of spreading, fernlike leaves. In winter nakedness they are most picturesque, with their broadly branching twigs bearing aloft the wine-colored pompons against the background of snow, and calling to the winter birds to come and partake of the pleasantly acid drupes. In spring, they put out their soft leaves in exquisite shades of pale pinkish green, and when in blossom their staminate panicles of greenish white cover them with loose pyramids of delicate bloom.

Well may it be called velvet sumac, for this year’s growth of wood and the leaf stems are covered with fine hairs, pinkish at first, but soon white; if we slip our fingers down a branch, we can tell even without looking where last year’s growth began and ended, because of the velvety feel. The name staghorn sumac is just as fitting, for its upper branches spread widely like a stag’s horns and, like them, the new growth is covered with velvet.

The leaves are borne on the new wood, and therefore at the ends of branches; they are alternate; the petiole broadens where it clasps the branch, making a perfect nursery for the little next-year’s bud, which is nestled below it. The leaves are compound and the number of leaflets varies from eleven to thirty-one. Each leaflet is set close to the midrib, with a base that is not symmetrical; the leaflets have their edges toothed, and are long and narrow; they do not spread out on either side the midrib like a fern, but naturally droop somewhat, and thus conceal their undersides, which are much lighter in color. The leaflets are not always set exactly opposite; the basal ones are bent back toward the main stem, making a fold in the base of each. The end leaflets are not always three, symmetrically set, but sometimes are two and sometimes one, with two basal lobes.

The wine-colored “bob” is cone-shaped, but with a bunchy surface. Remove all the seeds from it and note its framework of tiny branches, and again pay admiring tribute to nature’s way of doing up compact packages. Each seed is a drupe, as is also the cherry. A drupe is merely a seed within a fleshy layer, all being enclosed in a firmer outside covering; here, the outside case is covered with dark red fuzz, a clothing of furs for winter, the fur standing out in all directions. The fleshy part around the seed has a pleasantly acid taste, and one of my childhood diversions was to share these fruits in winter with the birds. I probably inadvertently ate also many a little six-footed brother hidden away for winter safe-keeping, for every sumac panicle is a crowded insect-tenement.

It is only in its winter aspect that we can see the peculiar way of the sumac’s branching, which is in picturesque zigzags, ending with coarse, wide-spreading twigs. As each terminal twig was a stem for the bouquet of blossom and fruit set about with graceful leaves, it needed room and this is reason enough for the coarse branching. The wood of the sumac has a pith, and is coarse in texture.

During late May the new growth starts near the end of last year’s twig; the buds are yellowish and show off against the dark gray twigs. From the center of these buds comes the fuzzy new growth, which is usually reddish purple; the tiny leaves are folded, each leaflet creased at its midrib and folded tightly against itself; as the leaves unfold, they are olive-green tinted with red, and look like tassels coming out around the old dark red “bob.” When the sumacs are in blossom, we see in every group of them, two kinds; one with pyramids of white flowers, and the other with pinkish callow bobs. The structure of these two different flower-clusters is really the same, except that the white ones are looser and more widely spread. Each flower of the white panicle is staminate, and has five greenish, somewhat hairy sepals and five yellowish white petals, at the center of which are five large anthers. A flower from the bob is quite different; it has the five hairy sepals alternating with five narrow, yellowish white petals, both clasping the globular base, or ovary, which is now quite covered with pinkish plush, and bears at its tip the three styles flaring into stigmas.

The velvet sumac is larger than the smooth species (Rhus glabra), and is easily distinguished from it, since the new wood of the latter is smooth and covered with bloom but is not at all velvety. The poison sumac, which is very dangerous to many people when handled, is a swamp species and its fruit is a loose, drooping panicle of whitish berries, very much like that of poison ivy; therefore, any sumac that has the red bob is not dangerous. The poison species has the edges of its leaflets entire and each leaflet has a distinct petiole of its own where it joins the midrib.

There is much tannin in sumac and it is used extensively to tan leather. The bobs are used for coloring a certain shade of brown. The famous Japanese lacquer is made from the juice of a species of sumac.