XXXIX 
THE WAX BERRY IS A POISON SIGN 
I SN’T IT ODD that one sumac bush grows on the up¬ 
land and is mild, sweet, and helpful to man, while an¬ 
other grows in the swamp and poisons him at the slightest 
touch! 
These two sumac bushes look very much alike, but 
when they are carefully examined, they are found to have 
certain differences. Each of them has a long leaf stem 
with leaflets opposite each other and a single one at the 
tip. The poison sumac may have from seven to thirteen 
of these leaflets to the stem, but never more. The upland 
sumac may have from nine to thirty-one leaflets. 
The upland sumac has red berries in the autumn. The 
poison sumac has white, waxy berries somewhat like those 
of the mistletoe. 
And here is another strange thing. These same white 
berries with a single seed appear on two other plants. 
These are the so-called poison oak and the poison ivy, 
neither of which is either oak or ivy, and neither of which 
looks in any other way like the poison sumac. The ber¬ 
ries of these two plants are almost identical. Then, 
strangely, they have that mean trait of the sumac of poi¬ 
soning human beings at a touch. This trade-mark of the 
white wax berry binds the three plants together. It shows 
that they are of the same breed. They are all, in fact, 
members of the sumac family. Poison oak and poison ivy 
are cousins of the sumac that scalds. 
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