Around the Garden

People often fear poison sumac and poison oak as much as poison ivy. It’s time to rehabilitate the most common sumac shrub in these parts, the staghorn sumac. This is a plant with some amazing qualities. For one thing, it will grow in really, really poor soil. For another, it has a remarkable color and texture, starting off with velvety green-and-magenta leaflets that could double as one of Princess Kate’s fascinators.

By mid-summer, sumac really comes into its own, when the upright, flame-like berry clusters, or sumac bobs, replace the not very exciting flowers. The berries are actually drupes, a category that includes almonds, pistachios and peaches. Birds like them a lot.

Shortly after the fruits appear, the leaves begin to turn scarlet, easily the rival of red maple, and much earlier, too.

Best of all, the common sumac found around these parts is most definitely not poisonous. Native Americans made a beverage similar to lemonade from the staghorn sumac fruit. Come August, consider taking the kids foraging, and you can hydrate them with the result. (A quick search on the internet will provide you with dozens of recipes – most just call for soaking the ripe fruit in cold water. )

A close cousin of the staghorn sumac produces fruits that are ground into a spice mixture, sometimes called Za’atar. If anyone knows what to do with it, please let me know, since the jar of it in my cupboard is still awaiting a recipe.

In addition to the common varieties, cultivars such as the TigerEye variegated sumac are available in nurseries. In my expensive experience, this is a gorgeous but fragile plant – I may not try it a third time after two disasters.

But what, you ask, about its poisonous reputation? It’s all about the bad pennies in the family, or guilt by association. Sumac falls into the large Toxicodendron genus, of which one species is Toxicodendron vernix, the toxic poison sumac. If I were a member of the family, I would ask for a name change for sure.

(Poison ivy is Toxicodendron radicans. Poison oak, or Toxicodendron pubescens, is virtually unknown in Connecticut.)

Every resource I’ve consulted indicates that poison sumac is not found in Connecticut. If it is, it’s in an area so wet you are unlikely to be there, since it grows with its roots submerged in water year-round.

So, if you come in from the garden sporting a really awful rash, you can probably blame it on poison ivy, which seems rampant this year. Some scientists believe that increasing levels of CO₂ in the atmosphere have caused urushiol, the active ingredient in all three weeds, to be much more virulent than formerly.

Next week, I promise to write about something more cheerful – unless I’m distracted by the Chinese cousin of the sumac, know variously as Ailanthus altissima or Tree of Heaven, one of the least heavenly invasive plants in our part of the world.