Handbook of Teeies of the Northern States and Canada. 307 



The Stag-horn Sumach is occasionally a.i 

 or 40 ft. in height, with trunk 12-15 in. in 

 diameter at base, but is usually nuicli smaller 

 and often forms extensive thickets as a shrub 

 but a few feet in height. It usually has a 

 more or less crooked or inclining trunk divid- 

 ing into few large branches and ultimately 

 forming a broad flat or somewhat rounded 

 open head. Its favorite home is dry sandy or 

 gravelly uplands or slopes where it grows in 

 abundance in northeastern United States and 

 Canada, enlivening desolate regions with its 

 handsome fern-like foliage of green interspersed 

 with large thyrses of pale yellow male IloAvers 

 or later with crimson bunches of velvety fruit. 

 Its autumnal garb of red, purple and yellow 

 makes it an even more conspicuous object, and 

 when leafless in autumn its velvety spreading 

 branches are quite suggestive of the antlers 

 of a stag in the velvet; whence its name. 



Its wood is light, a cu. ft. when absolutely 



dry weighing 27.15 lbs., soft, and of a golden 



yellow color streaked with tints of brown and 



green with white sap-wood. 2 The bark and 



leaves are rich in tannin and an infusion of 



the tart fruit is u.sed as a gargle. 



Lcavm pinnate, deciduous, 12-24 in. long, vel- 

 vety pubescent, witli 11-81 lanceolate subsessile 

 leaflets rounded at base, lon^-pointed, sharply ser- 

 rate (rarely laciniate) dark green above, lighter 

 and pubescent beneath. Flowers yellow-green, in 

 terminal dense eomnound panicles, staminat" 

 pnnicles much the laro-^st : branchlets velvety 

 piib^scent. Fnnf drunes about Vs in. in diametcT". 

 globose, covered witli crimson acid hairs and 

 masspd 'n comnact nanicles "'bieh are conspicuous 

 du'"inT the enMre winter at the ends of the velvety 

 branchlets.^ 



1. Rhus typhina Ij. 



2. A. W., I, 5. 



.3. For genus see p. 44.">. 



