VENETIAN SUMACH. 183 
Soil and Culture. This shrub prospers best in a dry loam, though it will 
grow in any common garden soil. It may be propagated by seeds, or by peg- 
ging down the branches flat to the ground, in the spring, and strewing earth 
over them. Young shoots will rise and take root at the base, which may be 
severed from the parent stock in autumn, and planted in pots or in the site where 
they are intended to remain. As an ornamental shrub, this species deserves a 
place in every garden and collection where there is room for it to extend itself. 
And there is but little doubt but it might be profitably cultivated in many parts 
of the United States, for the purposes of tanning and dyeing. 
Uses, fyc. In Greece, and in the south of Russia, the whole plant is used for 
tanning, and for dyeing leather, wool, and silk, yellow. In Italy, particularly 
about Venice, it is used for dyeing black. In Syria, Palestine, France, Spain, 
and Portugal, this species, as well as the Rhus coriaria, are cultivated with care, 
if they do not grow naturally, and the shoots are cut down every year quite to 
the ground, which, on being dried, are reduced to powder by mills, and thus pre- 
pared for use. In the commerce of the south of France, there is another plant 
employed as sumach, called redoul, and known by botanists under the name of 
Coriaria myrtifolia. When reduced to a powder, it somewhat resembles the 
Sicilian sumach in colour, but may be readily distinguished from it by an 
unpleasant herbaceous odour, while that of the latter is fragrant, penetrating, 
and agreeable. 
