Sumach ( Anacardiacece) 73 



mostly toward their ends, give a peculiar umbrella-like 

 look. The wood is very soft and brittle, yellow, with the 

 sap-wood white. In spring in the sugar orchards the 

 young shoots, cleared of their pith, serve as "sap quills" 

 for drawing the running sap from the maples. The wood 

 forms a yellow dye, and an infusion of the berries is used 

 as a gargle for sore-throat. The thick down upon the 

 young branches, and their shape, are suggestive of the 

 horns of a stag, whence the name. 



Fig. 23. (3) Dwarf Sumach. Mountain Sumach. R.copall\na,L. 



Flowers, small, greenish, in upright pyramid-shaped, 

 stemless clusters, toward the ends of the branches. 

 July. 



Leaflets, nine to twenty-one (oftenest nine to thirteen), 

 one to three inches long, edge entire, base usually 

 rounded and one-sided, upper surface dark and shin- 

 ing. Leaf-stem, expanded between the pairs of leaf- 

 lets into broadly winged margins. 



Fruit, rounded, hairy, varying in color in ripening from 

 delicate neutral tints, grays and drabs, to red ; acid. 

 Stone, smooth. September. 



Found, very widely distributed, usually in dry and rocky 

 places. 



A shrub three to five feet high, or sometimes, in favor- 

 able locations, twenty feet high, oftenest forming clumps 

 or borders along the edge of woods and thickets. Its 

 peculiar winged foliage, and the constantly changing 

 tints of flower, fruit, and leaf, make it the most attractive 

 of the Sumachs, and best worthy of ornamental cultiva- 

 tion. A mass of them set in a corner of the garden or 

 grounds would be constantly attractive. 



