20 SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. ANACARDIACES. 
separate plants in short compact pubescent panicles, the lower branches being developed from the axils 
of the upper leaves. The panicles are four to six inches long and three or four inches broad, and are 
usually rather smaller on the female than on the male plant. The bracts and bractlets, which fall 
before the expansion of the flowers, are ovate or oblong and densely cinereo-pilose. The pedicels are 
stout and pubescent, and vary from an-.eighth to a quarter of an inch in length. The calyx is 
puberulous on the outer surface; its ovate acute segments are a third of the length of the ovate 
greenish yellow petals, which are rounded at the apex and at maturity are reflexed above the middle. 
The disk is red and conspicuous. The stamens are somewhat longer than the petals, with slender 
filaments and large orange-colored anthers ; in the fertile flower they are much shorter than the petals 
and have minute rudimentary anthers. The ovary is ovate, pubescent, and contracted into three short 
thick spreading styles with large capitate stigmas; in the staminate flower it is glabrous and much 
smaller. In Texas the flowers appear in June, and in New England during the first days of August, 
those of the sterile plant opening in succession during nearly a month and continuing to unfold long 
after those of the fertile plant have fallen. The fruit ripens in five or six weeks, and is borne in stout 
compact often nodding clusters with pubescent stems and branches, which sometimes remain on the 
plants until the beginning of the following summer. The drupe is an eighth of an inch across, 
slightly obovate, and more or less flattened, with a thin bright red coat covered with short fine 
glandular hairs, a smooth bony orange-brown stone, and a reniform seed with a broad funicle and 
a smooth orange-colored testa. 
Rhus copallina is widely and generally distributed from northern New England to Manatee and 
the shores of Caximbas Bay, Florida, and to Missouri, Arkansas, and the valley of the San Antonio 
River in Texas, and occurs in Cuba. It occupies dry hillsides and ridges, and becomes truly arborescent 
only in southern Arkansas and in eastern Texas; east of the Mississippi River it rarely grows more 
than a few feet high, and, spreading by underground stems, forms broad thickets on gravelly sterile 
land. 
The wood of Rhus copallina is light, soft, and coarse-grained, with a satiny surface. It contains 
many thin obscure medullary rays and rows of large open ducts marking the layers of annual growth. 
It is hight brown streaked with green and often tinged with red; the thin light-colored sapwood is 
composed of four or five layers of annual growth. The specific gravity of the absolutely dry wood 
is 0.5273, a cubic foot weighing 32.86 pounds. 
The leaves, like those of the other species of the genus, are rich in tannin, and in some parts of 
the country, principally in Maryland, West Virginia, and Tennessee; they are gathered in large quantities 
and are ground for curing leather and for dyeing.’ The acid and astringent fruit possesses the same 
properties and is used for the same purposes as the fruit of the other North American Sumachs. 
thus copallina varies considerably in the size and form of its leaflets. The most distinct and 
probably the most constant of the varieties is var. Janceolata,’ a small tree found from the prairies of 
eastern Texas to the valley of the Rio Grande. It is distinguished by its narrower acute often falcate 
and entire leaflets, and by its larger inflorescence and fruit. This plant grows to the height of twenty- 
five or thirty feet, with a trunk sometimes eight inches in diameter, covered with dark gray bark marked 
with red lenticular excrescences. It inhabits dry limestone uplands, often forming large thickets on 
river bluffs, about the heads of prairie ravines, and near the banks of small streams. The flowers 
appear in July or August, and the fruit, which is dull red or sometimes green, ripens in early autumn 
and falls before the beginning of winter. The specific gravity of the absolutely dry wood of this 
variety is 0.5184, a cubic foot weighing 32.31 pounds. 
1 Special Report No. 26, U. S. Dept. Agric. 26, t. 5. xvii. 338.— Sargent, Forest Trees N. Am. 10th Census U. S. ix. 
* Gray, Jour. Bost. Soc. Nat. Hist. vi. 158 (Pl. Lindheim. ii.).— 53. — Coulter, Contrib. U. S. Nat. Herb. ii. 67 (Man. Pl. W. 
Torrey, Bot. Mex. Bound. Surv. 44.— Watson, Proc. Am. Acad. Texas). 
