ANACARDIACE^E 663 



until the beginning of the following summer, ' across, slightly obovoid, more or less flat- 

 tened, with a thin bright red coat covered with short fine glandular hairs, and a smooth 

 bony orange-brown stone; seed reniform, smooth, orange-colored, with a broad funicle. 



A tree, 25-30 high, with colorless watery juice, a short stout trunk 8'-10' in diameter, 

 erect spreading branches, and branchlets at first dark green tinged with red and more or 

 less densely clothed with short fine or sometimes ferrugineous pubescence, appearing 

 slightly zigzag at the end of their first season from the swellings formed by the prominent 

 leaf-scars, and then pale reddish brown, slightly puberulous and marked by conspicuous 

 dark-colored lenticels; or at the north usually a low shrub rarely more than 4-5 tall. 

 Winter-buds minute, nearly globose, and covered with dark rusty brown tomentum. 

 Bark of the trunk %'-%' thick, light brown tinged with red, and marked by large ele- 

 vated dark red-brown circular excrescences, and separating into large thin papery scales. 

 Wood light, soft, coarse-grained, light brown streaked with green and often tinged with 

 red, with thin lighter colored sapwood of 4 or 5 layers of annual growth. The leaves are 

 rich in tannin and are gathered in large quantities and ground for curing leather and for 

 dyeing. 



Distribution. Dry hillsides and ridges; widely and generally distributed from northern 

 New England to southern Florida, and to southeastern Iowa, southeastern Nebraska, east- 

 ern Kansas and the valley of the San Antonio River, Texas; in Cuba; in the United States 

 arborescent only southward; at the north rarely more than a few feet high and spreading 

 by underground stems on gravelly sterile soil into broad thickets; varying considerably in 

 the size and form of the leaflets. The most distinct and probably the most constant of 

 these varieties is var. lanceolata A. Gray, a small tree growing on the prairies of eastern 

 Texas to the valley of the Rio Grande and to southeastern New Mexico, often forming 

 thickets on river bluffs or on the banks of small streams, and distinguished by its narrow 

 acute often falcate leaflets and by its larger inflorescence and fruit. A tree sometimes 

 25-30 high, with a trunk occasionally 8' in diameter, covered by dark gray bark marked 

 by lenticular excrescences. The flowers appear in July and August and the dull red or 

 sometimes green fruit ripens in early autumn and falls before the beginning of winter. 



Occasionally cultivated as an ornamental plant in the eastern United States, and in 

 western and northern Europe. 



3. Rhus vernix L. Poison Dogwood. Poison Sumach. 



Leaves 7 '-14' long, with a slender usually light red or red and green petiole, and 7-13 

 obovate-oblong entire leaflets slightly unequal at base and narrowed at the acute or 

 rounded apex, bright orange color and coated, especially on the margins and under sur- 

 face, with fine pubescence when they unfold, soon becoming glabrous, and at maturity 

 3'-4' long, If '-2' wide, dark green and lustrous above, pale below, with a prominent mid- 

 rib scarlet above, primary veins forked near the margins, conspicuous reticulate veinlets, 

 and revolute margins: turning early in the autumn before falling to brilliant shades of 

 scarlet or orange and scarlet. Flowers about f long, appearing in early summer on 

 slender pubescent pedicels bibracteolate near the middle, in long narrow axillary pubes- 

 cent panicles crowded near the end of the branches, with acute pubescent early deciduous 

 bracts and bractlets; calyx-lobes acute, one third the length of the yellow-green acute petals 

 erect and slightly reflexed toward the apex; stamens nearly twice as long as the petals, 

 with slender filaments and large orange-colored anthers, in the fertile flower not more than 

 half the length of the petals, with small rudimentary anthers; ovary ovoid-globose, with 

 short thick spreading styles terminating in large capitate stigmas. Fruit ripening in 

 September and often persistent on the branches until the following spring, in long grace- 

 ful racemes, ovoid, acute, often flattened and slightly gibbous, tip'ped with the dark rem- 

 nants of the styles, glabrous, striate, ivory-white or white tinged with yellow, very lustrous, 

 and about \' long; stone conspicuously grooved, the wall thin, membranaceous; seed pale 

 yellow. 



A tree, with acrid poisonous juice turning black on exposure, occasionally 25 high, with 



