SUMACH FAMILY 



supposition that it is a shrub. Whatever form it may 

 have upon mountain tops, — when transferred to the 

 lowlands, given a rich soil and opportunity to grow, it 

 proceeds forthwith to become a tree, and is reduced to 

 a shrub by main force alone. 



This beautiful creature, clothed in the summer with 

 foliage of dark glossy green, bearing its great clusters 

 of red fruit throughout the winter, showing in autumn 

 the most superb combination of the hues of crimson 

 and scarlet, pays the price of its beauty and is cut and 

 mutilated out of all semblance of nature in order to 

 make it a shrub. 



Long ago Horace told us, '' Though you drive out 

 nature with a fork, yet will she always return." And 

 the Dwarf Sumach is and will continue to be a tree, 

 notwithstanding the knife and the pruning shears. 



The blooming period is late, sometimes in early Au- 

 gust. The panicle of sterile flowers is twelve to eighteen 

 inches long, while that of the fertile ones is three to six. 

 A persistent character is the winged petiole by which 

 it is readily distinguished from other sumachs, 



POISON SUMACH 



Rhus vernix. RJnis vcnoiata. 



The Poison Sumach is in its best estate a tree, but it 

 occurs so frequently as a shrub, and is really such a 

 menace where it grows, that the fc^rm of its leaves and 

 the general appearance of the plant can not be made 

 too evident to the community at large. It is often con- 

 tused in the popular mind with the other sumachs of 

 many-foliate leaves, RJiu,^ Jnrta, RJnis glabra, and Rhus 



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