XXXIV. THE POISON SUMACH. 505 



throwing out a few branches towards the top. The wood is 

 brittle and the stem full of pith. The recent shoots are rather 

 stout and tough, purple, or green clouded with purple, crowded 

 with orange dots which soon change to an orange gray. The 

 leaf-stalks are purple, or greenish-purple, or umber. The leaf- 

 lets, 3 to 13 in number, are nearly sessile, varying from ovate to 

 obovate, lanceolate, unequal at base, acute below, somewhat 

 rounded above, pointed at the end or slightly acuminate, entire, 

 margin somewhat reflexed, dark green, and with a rich polish, 

 the veins of a purplish red above, much paler, sometimes downy, 

 conspicuously reticulate beneath. The flowers, which are small 

 and greenish-yellow, are in open, loose panicles, from the axils 

 of the leaves. The sterile and fertile flowers are on different 

 plants, the panicles of the latter eight or ten inches long, those 

 with the sterile flowers still longer. At the base of the partial 

 footstalks are slender, oblong, tapering bracts. The segments 

 of the calyx are ovate, the petals usually curved ; the stamens 

 longer and alternating with them. 



This is the most poisonous woody plant of New England. 

 Some persons are so susceptible to its influence, as to be poisoned 

 by the air blowing from it, or by being near a fire on which it is 

 burning. The poison shows itself in painful and long-continued 

 swellings and eruptions of the face and hands and other parts of 

 the body. These effects are exasperated by smelling or hand- 

 ling the plant. Other persons handle and rub it, and even chew 

 and swallow the leaves, with impunity. These opposite effects 

 are sometimes produced on individuals of the same family. In 

 some instances, persons ordinarily exempt from its effects, have 

 been poisoned by being exposed to its influence while in a state 

 of perspiration. 



Professor Hopkins, of Williams College, informs me that he 

 has found a decoction of the root of the Indian Poke of the low 

 grounds, Yeratrum viride, very efficacious as a remedy in cases 

 of poison from this plant. 



The near resemblance in all the properties of the Poison Su- 

 mach, to those of the Varnish-yielding Sumach of Japan, from 

 which, according to Thunberg, the best varnish of that country 

 is obtained, has led to the belief that a similar substance might 

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