sumach

Look at this sumach; its leaves are red, though everybody knows the fruit is in the yellow blossom in the month of July!"

A deep and careless incision had been made into each tree, near its root, into which little spouts, formed of the I bark of the alder, or of the sumach, were fastened; and a trough, roughly dug out of the linden, or basswood, was I lying at the root of each tree, to catch the sap that flowed from this extremely wasteful and inartificial arrangement.

I dug my cellar in the side of a hill sloping to the south, where a woodchuck had formerly dug his burrow, down through sumach and blackberry roots, and the lowest stain of vegetation, six feet square by seven deep, to a fine sand where potatoes would not freeze in any winter.

| Rhus typhina I'm watching the stag's horn sumach in my front garden turn a vibrant shade of orange.

The smokey part of its name derives from the frothy plumes of delicate flowers in summer | Rhus typhina I'M watching the stag's horn sumach in my front garden turn a vibrant shade of orange.

| Rhus typhina I'M watching the stag's horn sumach my front garden turn a vibrant shade of orange.

The stag's horn sumach, or Rhus typhina, can also be relied on for autumn impact when its lance-shaped green leaves turn shades of orange, red, yellow and purple.

Traditionally, "Chelow" is served with a dollop of butter, and a generous dusting of sumac (dried, crushed berries of sumach tree with a sour, lemony flavor).

Writing in The American Botanist in 1909, Frank Dobbin recalled, "Our grandmothers too had a use for the sumach. They gathered the fruit or 'bobs' as they were called, and by boiling them made a dye that would produce a fine shade of silver gray."