ANACARDIACES. 
SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 19 
RHUS COPALLINA. 
Sumach. 
BRANCHES and leaf-stalks pubescent. 
green on the lower surface. 
Petioles wing-margined ; leaflets 9 to 21, 
Fruit pilose. 
Rhus copallina, Linnzus, Spec. 266. — Miller, Dict. ed. 8, i. 362. — Torrey, Fl. N. Y. i. 129. — De Candolle, Prodr. 
No. 6.— Medicus, Bot. Beob. 1782, 224. — Marshall, 
Arbust. Am. 128. — Wangenheim, Nordam. Holz. 96. — 
Walter, Fl. Car. 255. — Geertner, Fruct. i. 205, t. 44. — 
Aiton, Hort. Kew. i. 366. — Plenck, Icon. t. 233. — La- 
marck, Jil. ii. 346, t. 207, £. 3. — Jacquin, Hort. Schoenb. 
iii. 50, t. 341. — Willdenow, Spec. i. 1480; Enum. 324. — 
Michaux, Fl. Bor.-Am. i. 182.—Schkuhr, Hand). i. 237.— 
Nouveau Duhamel, ii. 160.— Persoon, Syn. i. 324. — 
Desfontaines, Hist. Arb. ii. 326.— Poiret, Lam. Dict. 
ii. 68. — Sprengel, Syst. i. 936. — Don, Gen. Syst. ii. 
72.— Spach, Hist. Vég. ii. 214. — Torrey & Gray, Fl. N. 
Am. i. 217. — Dietrich, Syn. ii. 1003.— Loudon, Arb. Brit. 
ii. 554, f. 229. —Emerson, 7rees Mass. 503. — Darling- 
ton, Fl. Cestr. ed. 3, 43.— Chapman, Fl. 69. — Curtis, 
Rep. Geolog. Surv. N. Car. 1860, iii. 92. — Koch, Dendr. 
i. 575. — Ridgway, Proc. U. S. Nat. Mus. 1882, 63. — 
Engler, De Candolle Monogr. Phaner. iv. 383. — Hems- 
ley, Bot. Biol. Am. Cent. i. 217. — Sargent, Forest Trees 
vii. 506.— Pursh, FU. Am. Sept. i. 205. — Bigelow, FV. 
Boston. 72. — Nuttall, Gen. i. 203. — Roemer & Schultes, 
Syst. vi. 647.— Hayne, Dendr. Fl. 34.— Elliott, Sk. 
N. Am. 10th Census U. S. ix. 55. — Watson & Coulter, 
Gray’s Man. ed. 6, 119. — Coulter, Contrib. U. S. Nat. 
Herb. ii. 67 (Man. Pl. W. Texas). 
A tree, twenty-five to thirty feet in height, with colorless watery juice, a short stout trunk cight or 
ten inches in diameter, and erect spreading branches ; or at the north a low shrub rarely more than four 
or five feet high. The bark of the trunk varies from a third to half an inch in thickness; the surface, 
which is light brown tinged with red and is marked by large elevated dark red-brown circular excres- 
cences, separates into large thin papery scales. The branchlets when they appear are dark green tinged 
with red, and are more or less densely clothed with short fine or sometimes ferrugineous pubescence,* 
and are marked by many minute dark red lenticels; they appear slightly zigzag by the end of the first 
season on account of the swellings formed by the prominent leaf-scars, and are then covered with pale 
The winter-buds 
are minute, nearly globular, and clothed with dark rusty brown tomentum. The leaves are six to eight 
red-brown slightly puberulous bark dotted with conspicuous dark-colored lenticels. 
inches long and have slender pubescent petioles with enlarged bases nearly surrounding and inclosing 
the buds formed in their axils. The stalk of the leaf is more or less broadly wing-margined between 
the leaflets, the wings increasing in width towards the point of the leaf, each pair being broadest in the 
middle and narrowed at the two extremities. The leaflets are oblong or ovate-lanceolate, entire or 
remotely serrate above the middle, sharp-pointed or rarely emarginate at the apex, and acute or obtuse 
and often unequal at the base. The lower pairs are short-petiolulate and smaller than those above the 
middle of the leaf ; the others are sessile with the exception of the terminal leaflet, which is sometimes 
contracted into a long-winged stalk. When they unfold, the leaflets are dark green and slightly 
puberulous on the upper surface, especially along the midrib, and are covered on the lower surface with 
fine silvery white pubescence ; at maturity they are an inch and a half to two inches and a half long, and 
three quarters of an inch broad, with slighty thickened and revolute margins and prominent midribs 
and primary veins, and are then subcoriaceous, the upper surface being lustrous, dark green, and 
glabrous with the exception of the midrib, and the lower surface pale and pubescent. In the autumn 
the upper surface turns a dark rich maroon color. The male and female flowers are produced on 
1 The branchlets on some plants in the east are slightly puberu- _ is not unusual to find both branchlets and leaf-stalks clothed with 
lous, while west of the Mississippi River from Missouri to Texas it dense ferrugineous tomentum. 
