White and Greenish 



monly imported from southern Europe to adorn our lawns (al- 

 though a similar species grows wild in the Southwest), serves a 

 more ultilitarian purpose in supplying commerce with a rich orange- 

 yellow dye-wood known as young fustic. All this tribe of shrubs 

 and trees contain resinous, milky juice, drying dark like varnish, 

 which in a Japanese species is transformed by the clever native 

 artisans into their famous lacquer. With a commercial instinct 

 worthy of the Hebrew, they guard this process as a national secret. 



The Smooth, Upland, or Scarlet Sumac (R. glabra), similar to 

 the staghorn, but lacking its velvety down, and usually of much 

 lower growth, is the very common and widely distributed shrub of 

 dry roadsides, railroad banks, and barren fields. Another low-grow- 

 ing, but more or less downy upland sumac, the Dwarf, Black, or 

 Mountain species {R. capallina), may be known by its dark, glossy 

 green foliage, pale on the under side, and by the broadening of the 

 stem into wings between the leaflets. Hungry migrating birds 

 alight to feast on the harmless acid red fruit when the gorgeous 

 autumnal foliage illuminates their route southward. But while 

 they are, of course, the natural agents for distributing the plants 

 over the country, men find that by cutting bits of any sumac root 

 and planting them in good garden soil, strong specimens are 

 secured within a year. An exquisite cut-leaved variety of the 

 smooth sumac adorns many fine lawns. 



Everyone should know the Poison Sumac {R. yernix) — R. 

 venenata of Gray— as the shrub above all others to avoid. Like its 

 cousin, the Poison or Three-leaved Ivy {R. radicans), which 

 once had the specific name Toxicodendron, although Linnaeus 

 applied that title to a hairy shrub of the Southern States, the poi- 

 son sumac causes most painful swelling and irritation to the skin 

 of some people, though they do nothing more than pass it by 

 when the wind is blowing over it. Others may handle both these 

 plants with impunity. In spring they are especially noisome; but 

 when the pores of the skin are opened by perspiration, people who 

 are at all sensitive should give them a wide berth at any season. 

 Usually the poison sumac grows in wet or swampy ground ; its 

 bark is gray, its leaf-stalks are red ; the leaves are compounded, of 

 fewer leaflets than those of the innocent sumacs — that is, of from 

 seven to thirteen — which are green on both sides; the flowers, 

 which are dull whitish-green, grow in loose panicles /row the axils 

 of the leaves, and naturally the berries follow them in the same 

 unusual situation. " By their fruits ye shall know them : " all the 

 harmless sumacs have red fruit clusters at the ends of the branches, 

 whereas both the poison sumac's and the poison ivy's axillary 

 clusters are dull grayish-white. 



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