24: HOUGH'S AMERICAN WOODS. 



ORDER ANACABDIACE^] : CASHEW FAMILY. 



Leaves alternate, simple or compound, without pellucid dots; stipules none. Flowers 

 polypetalous, small, often polygamous, regular and furnished with bracts; sepals 3-5, 

 united at the base, persistent; petals 5 (or sometimes wanting), imbricated in the bud; 

 stamens 5 or 10, alternate with the petals and perigynous; ovary free, 1-celled and 

 1-ovuled; styles or stigmas 3. Fruit a berry or drupe, the seed containing no albumen. 



Trees or shrubs with a milky resinous or gummy acrid juice, which, as well as the 

 exhalations, are often poisonous. 



GENUS RHUS, LINNAEUS. 



Leaves alternate, mostly compound (rarely simple) without stipules. Flowers minute, 

 white or greenish, polygamous or dioecious by abortion, in axillary or terminal compound 

 panicles ; calyx 5-lobed, generally persistent ; petals 5, longer than the lobes of the calyx 

 and inserted under the margin of the disk which surrounds the base of the free ovary 

 imbricated in aestivation ; stamens 5, alternate with the petals, with subulate filaments 

 and oblong introrse 2-celled anthers, attached by the back and longitudinally dehiscent, 

 rudimentary in the pistallate flowers; pistil with 1-celled ovary, three terminal styles with 

 capitate stigmas, the ovary containing a single anatropous ovule suspended by a funiculus 

 rising from the base of the cell. Fruit a smooth or hairy berry with thin dryish and 

 resinous sarcocarp and crustaceous or horny endocarp; seed destitute of albumen and with 

 thin membranous testa. 



(The name, Rhus, is the old Latin and Greek name of the Sumach.) 



255. RHUS VERNIX, L. 



POISON SUMACH. 

 Ger.. Gift-Sumach. Fr., Sumach Empoisonne. Sp., Zumaque Venenoso. 



SPECIFIC CHARACTERS: Leaves 7-14 in. long and with 7-13 short-petiolate ovate- 

 oblong or obovate entire leaflets (the terminal one often 2 or 3-lobed) obtuse or acute and 

 unequal at base and mostly acuminate at apex, lustrous dark green above, paler and 

 prominently veined beneath. Flowers (June) yellow-green, l /$ in. across, in long loose 

 axillary panicles. Fruit ripens in September and often hangs from leafless branches in the 

 winter, in long loose panicles ; drupe compressed globose, about ^4 in. in diameter, shining 

 ivory white or grayish ; stone striated. 



A low tree with wide-spreading top of few branches, occasionally attain- 

 ing the height of 20 or 30 ft. (8 m.), and with short trunk, rarely 10 or 12 

 in. (0.30 m.) in diameter. This is covered with a smooth dark-gray bark,- 

 prominently marked horizontally with large lenticels. Over a large part of 

 its range it is considered rather a shrub than a tree. 



HABITAT. From about the latitude of the northern boundary of New 

 York and Vermont, westward to Minnesota and southward to centra^ Mis- 

 sissippi and Alabama, growing in swamps and along the low, miry banks of 

 streams and ponds, where its existence is always made evident in autumn 

 by the brilliancy of its red and yellow autumnal foliage and pearl-like fruit. 



