Every morning at 5 a.m. my girlfriend Lorie and I walk. Besides the exercise benefit, seeing the world around us at that hour every weekday all year round challenges us to take notice. We were walking the other day when we noticed the sumac flowering and I thought, "Now, there's a column."
Unfairly, the commonly seen sumac around our area, known as staghorn sumac, takes a serious beating due to its notorious "cousin," the infamous poison sumac. Today, we are going to set the record straight so the staghorn can take its rightful place in the annals of spectacular native plants of the great Northeast.
Right off the bat, let's clear the air and identify the poison sumac properly. Its binomial name is Toxicodendron vernxi, the staghorn sumac is Rhus typhina, so the first hint they are two differing entities is that they do not even belong to the same genus (capitalized name) or species (lower case). Yes, they belong to the same family of "flowering plants that bear fruit in drupes" (Anacardiaceae), but so do the cashew and mango.
The leaf of the staghorn is horticulturally referred to as compound. It's roughly 18 to 24 inches in length with a green rachis (center stem) that is lined with up to 20 narrow, finely serrated leaflets. The leaf of the poison sumac, although compound, has a differently shaped leaflet, more rounded with a smooth edge attached to a bright red rachis (this is a huge telltale sign).
In addition, the poison sumac leaflets appear to fold upward towards the sun, whereas the staghorns lie flat.
Another glaring difference is the staghorn's stems and branches; they are covered in a soft fuzz (it's this fuzz and its resemblance to the fuzz that covers the new antlers of a buck that gives the staghorn its name). Its nefarious cousin's stems are smooth.
Both have clusters of tiny individual chartreuse green flowers that form a larger pyramidal blossom that appears June through July and it's this beautiful, dainty-looking flower of the staghorn that caught Lorie's and my attention walking the other day.
But here we go again with differences; the "bold" sumac's blooms mature to porcelain white drupes (clusters) of berries, where the staghorn forms a stunning, fuzzy, dark-red spire.
These red spires remain throughout the winter, providing hundreds of berries each for birds. They can also be cut and incorporated into floral arrangements or added to evergreen swags at Christmas for an elegantly simple look. Under no circumstances, however, do you ever want to touch any part, berry, stem, bark or root of the poison sumac plant, as all are toxic and can produce massive rashes and blisters.
Poison sumac prefers moist locations and, probably the best news of all, it's really not all that common around our area. Look for the staghorn along field edges, railroad tracks and roadsides; they are not fussy when it comes to soil conditions. They can be found growing just about anywhere in large stands, which is most likely why so many folks see them more as a weed than a valuable landscape plant.
Staghorn sumac naturally colonizes rapidly by way of suckers, and if they have a downfall this is definitely it. Their technique of spreading makes them nearly impossible to eradicate once they get a "root hold," which makes them a superior plant for erosion control and banks that are difficult to mow. They are often used on banks along exits of the Northway for just these reasons.
They are available in nurseries and can actually be trained as a single-stemmed tree with some effort: A stunning specimen of this use can be found on Oakwood Avenue in Troy.
Come the end of August, these harbingers of autumn will begin their transformation from summer green to an unmistakable brilliant red leaf topped with an equally stunning dark red crown, a sight to behold that makes them one of most spectacular natively grown plants in the Northeast.