VELVE Ys SUMACH 
which covers the growing shoot is the point of resemblance 
to a young stag’s horn. 
The beauty of the Sumach lies entirely in its foliage ; the 
leafless tree is stiff, awkward and clumsy, but after the leaves 
come out it is a different creature, clean-cut and beautiful all 
summer long. Its long, pinnately compound leaves are borne 
in tufts at the end of the branches, the main stem is either 
horizontal or slightly curved upward, while the leaflets have 
a decided tendency to hang down. These lift and sway with 
every passing breeze, and when the whole is crowned, as it so 
often is, with a great thyrsoid panicle of bright red fruit 
standing out from the centre of each leafy tuft, the effect is 
unique and beautiful. The little drupes which make the 
panicles are covered with crimson down which is charged 
with malic acid, sour but agreeable to the taste. They re- 
main on the tree all winter and become the food of the birds. 
In autumn all the sumachs, large and small, are wonderful 
for the brilliancy of their coloring. They glow in scarlet and 
gold which sometimes deepens to crimson and orange. The 
Velvet Sumach makes thickets on its own account, its smaller 
brother, 2. g/abra, the Smooth Sumach, follows its example, 
and along the fences, over deserted fields and up the rocky, 
gravelly, mountain-side they fling their magnificent beauty 
through all the October days. 
“Like glowing lava streams the sumach crawls 
Upon the mountain's granite walls.” 
The Velvet Sumach is dicecious. The staminate flowers 
have an ovary, but this aborts in process of development and 
only the pistillate produce fruit. The sterile trees flower 
fully a week or ten days earlier than the fertile ones. 
The color of the wood is peculiar and striking, being a sort 
of greenish orange, but the tree never grows large enough to 
furnish wood available for anything more than sticks and 
boxes. 
Rhus copallina, the Dwarf or Mountain Sumach, at the north 
is a shrub, but in the mountains of North Carolina and Ten- 
g!I 
