Field Guide · The Genus Rhus · Southeastern United States
Crimson at the Edge of the Field: A Field Guide to the Sumacs
Rhus is the plant that colonizes the forgotten places, the railroad bank and the fencerow and the raw cut of a new road, and pays back that hard ground with tropical foliage in July, a fire in October, and cones of red fruit that stand all winter against the snow.
In this guide
I.Meeting the genus
There is a particular kind of gardener who looks at a colony of sumac blazing on a highway bank and feels a small, disloyal envy. All that fall color, all that architecture, all that untroubled vigor, and nobody planted it, nobody watered it, nobody so much as noticed it until the leaves turned. Rhus is the genus that thrives on neglect, and for a long time that was held against it. The plant was too common, too weedy, too willing. We are, thankfully, past most of that now.
Rhus belongs to the cashew family, Anacardiaceae, and depending on which botanist you trust, the genus holds somewhere around thirty-five species worldwide, roughly a dozen of them native to the United States. The name is old, older than Linnaeus: rhous was the Greek word for these plants, carried into Latin more or less intact, and it has named the sumacs for the better part of two thousand years. What unites the genus is a chemistry as much as a look. The whole clan runs rich in tannins and gallic acid, the astringent compounds that gave sumac its long career in the tannery, the dye pot, the kitchen, and the medicine chest.
The look, though, is what sells the plant. Most sumacs carry long pinnately compound leaves that read as almost tropical through summer, a fine ferny texture on a woody frame, and nearly all of them close the year in some combination of orange, scarlet, burgundy, and oxblood that few other shrubs can touch. The flowers are modest, greenish-yellow panicles in early to midsummer, easy to overlook until you notice the bees have not overlooked them at all. Then come the fruit: dense, upright, cone-shaped clusters of fuzzy red drupes that ripen in late summer and hold, stubbornly, straight through winter.
Rhus is the genus that thrives on neglect, and for a long time that was held against it.
A word on habit, because it is the thing most likely to surprise a new grower. Many of the sumacs sucker. They spread by root, throwing up new stems at the colony's edge, and a single nursery plant will, given a few seasons and some room, become a picturesque thicket. This is a feature or a flaw entirely depending on the site. On a raw bank that needs holding, it is a gift. In a small formal border, it is a commitment. We will come back to how to manage it, because managing it is easy once you know the plant's intentions.
II.Not that sumac: the poison sumac question
Let us clear the air, since it comes up every single time. Poison sumac is real, it is genuinely miserable to tangle with, and it is not, botanically speaking, a sumac at all anymore. The plant once called Rhus vernix was long ago moved to the genus Toxicodendron, where it keeps company with poison ivy and poison oak and their shared cargo of urushiol, the oil responsible for the rash. None of the plants in this guide carry it.
Field Note · Telling them apart
The distinction is easy once you know where to look. Toxicodendron vernix hangs its fruit in loose, drooping clusters of creamy white or pale green, wears leaflets with smooth, untoothed margins, and grows almost exclusively in standing water and swampy ground. The true sumacs, the Rhus in this guide, hold their fruit in erect crimson cones or panicles, carry serrated or lobed leaflets, and prefer dry, sunny, well-drained sites where poison sumac would never set root. Red and upright and dry: harmless. White and drooping and wet: leave it be.
There is a real irony buried here. The name that scares people off is attached to the very trait that makes the genus useful. Sumac's astringency, the tannins and gallic acid, is exactly what tanned the leather and soured the drink and dried the wound. The chemistry is a virtue. It is only Toxicodendron, the family's difficult cousin, that turned the family talent toward mischief.
III.The native sumacs, plant by plant
Woodlanders grows a spread of the genus, and we have just brought two of the best back into stock. Here is the native cohort, from the tallest thicket-former down to a federally endangered groundcover that you grow as much to save as to see.
Rhus typhina
Staghorn Sumac
- 15–30 ft
- Sun
- Zones 3–8
- Native (NE)
- Suckering
- Deer-resistant
The largest of the North American sumacs and the most theatrical. Staghorn grows fifteen to thirty feet on stout, forking stems clothed in fine velvety hairs, the antler-in-velvet texture that names it. Big pinnate leaves run bright green through summer and detonate into yellow, orange, and red in fall, and female plants carry the classic upright crimson fruit cones through winter. It is fast, it suckers into broad colonies, and it is happiest on a hot, sunny, well-drained bank where you can let it run. The cutleaf forms give the same effect at a gentler scale for smaller gardens.
Rhus glabra
Smooth Sumac
- To small tree
- Sun
- Zones 3–9
- Native
- Suckering
- Scarlet fall
The most widespread sumac on the continent, and arguably the finest plant going for a hot, dry, impossible site. Smooth sumac takes its name, glabra, from stems that are waxy and hairless where staghorn is velvety. The long compound leaves give the same near-tropical texture in summer and turn a brilliant scarlet in fall, as fiery as any native shrub, and the erect crimson fruit panicles blaze against the snow. It colonizes by suckers into broad stands, or holds to a single tree-like specimen where you remove them. Pair it with little bluestem and asters and let the drought make the colony tougher.
Rhus aromatica
Fragrant Sumac
- 2–12 ft (variable)
- Sun / part shade
- Zones 3–9
- Native
- Fragrant
- Early bloom
The odd one out and the useful one. Fragrant sumac drops the long pinnate leaf for a trifoliate one, three leaflets often mistaken at a glance for poison oak and entirely harmless, releasing a clean lemony-resinous scent when crushed. It blooms in earliest spring, before the leaves, in tight chartreuse catkins that feed the first waking bees, and it closes the year in a layered blaze of orange, scarlet, burgundy, and oxblood, frequently all at once. Wildly variable in form, it may hug the ground or build to a twelve-foot shrub. Superb on dry banks and lean, rocky ground where erosion is the enemy.
Rhus aromatica 'Gro-Low'
Gro-Low Fragrant Sumac
- 1–2 ft × 6–8 ft
- Sun / part shade
- Zones 3–9
- Groundcover
- Weed-smothering
The ground-hugging selection of fragrant sumac, and one of the best woody groundcovers there is. 'Gro-Low' stays one to two feet tall while spreading six to eight feet across, knitting into a dense, weed-smothering carpet of glossy trifoliate leaves that turn red-orange in fall. Small yellow flowers open before the leaves for the early bees, and it asks only for sun and well-drained soil. Use it to bind a dry bank, fill a hot parking strip, or spill over a low wall where turf would sulk.
Rhus michauxii
Michaux's Sumac · Very rare
- 1–3 ft
- Sun / light shade
- Zones 6–9
- Federally endangered
- Groundcover-scale
Growing this one is an act of conservation. Michaux's sumac is a low, rhizomatous, densely hairy shrub rising only one to three feet, a well-behaved groundcover-scale member of the clan with the same ferny texture and the same startling orange-and-red fall color on a knee-high frame. It is also a federally listed endangered species, listed in 1989, endemic to the coastal plain and piedmont of Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida, where many surviving colonies are a single sex and cannot set seed. Every nursery-grown plant helps keep a vanishing American species in cultivation.
Field Note · Why the rare ones are single-sex
Most sumacs are dioecious: individual plants are either male or female, and you need both nearby for the female to set her red fruit. In a wide-ranging plant like smooth sumac this is no trouble. In a rare, fragmented one like Michaux's sumac it is a slow catastrophe, because a colony that spreads only by root sucker is genetically one plant, one sex, forever unfruited and unable to make seed. It is a quiet lesson in why rarity compounds: the smaller the population, the longer the odds that a male and a female will ever meet.
IV.Sumacs from farther afield
Two more in our beds pull the genus westward and eastward, and both are worth the experiment well outside their home ground.
Rhus microphylla
Littleleaf Sumac
- Large shrub
- Full sun
- Zones 6–10
- Xeric
- Rose-purple fall
A big, bushy sumac of west Texas, the Southwest, and northern Mexico, built for heat and drought. The compound leaves are made of tiny leaflets that give an almost feathery texture, and they turn a rose-to-purple in fall, an unusual tone in a genus that mostly runs to scarlet. Creamy spring flowers give way, on female plants, to fuzzy orange-red berries the birds work over. It pairs naturally with agaves and yuccas and asks only for sun and sharp drainage. A characterful native well worth trying in any hot, dry Southern garden.
Rhus javanica
Chinese Sumac / Nutgall Tree (now R. chinensis)
- 15–25 ft
- Sun / light shade
- Zones 5–9
- Winged rachis
- Late nectar
Better known today as Rhus chinensis, this is the Chinese sumac, a fast, adaptable large shrub or small tree of East and Southeast Asia, distinguished by a curiously winged leaf stalk and creamy late-summer panicles that feed bees when the rest of the garden has quit. Its real fame, though, is a partnership: a specialized aphid galls the young growth, and the resulting Chinese gall (Galla chinensis, or Wu Bei Zi) is among the richest natural sources of tannin known, harvested across Asia for centuries for tanning, ink, dye, and medicine. Few shrubs carry a stranger story.
V.The ethnobotanical thread
If you want to understand why people have kept sumac close for so long, put a handful of the ripe red fruit in a jar of cool water, let it steep in the sun for an afternoon, strain it through a cloth, and taste. What comes out is pink, tart, and startlingly like pink lemonade, the drink variously called sumac-ade or Indian lemonade, made across the plant's range for as long as anyone has kept records. The sourness is real citric and malic acid, not a trick of the tongue, and it is loaded with vitamin C.
Field Note · Cold water, never hot
Steep sumac fruit in cool or room-temperature water, never boiling. Hot water pulls the harsh, mouth-drying tannins out of the fibrous fruit and turns a bright drink bitter. Cold steeping takes the tart, fruity acids and leaves most of the tannin behind. Use ripe, deep-red clusters harvested before heavy rain (rain leaches the flavor), and taste as you go; strength varies plant to plant.
The same fruit, dried and ground, becomes the tart crimson spice that anchors za'atar, fattoush, and musakhan across the Middle East. That culinary sumac is usually a Mediterranean cousin, Rhus coriaria, whose fruit carries something like twelve percent citric acid by weight, nearly double a lemon's, rounded softer by the fruity tannins. The American sumacs belong to the same tart, tannin-rich clan, and the smooth, staghorn, and winged species have all served the same purpose on this continent.
Red and upright and dry: harmless. The chemistry that scared people off is the same chemistry that fed them.
Beyond the kitchen, the genus ran through daily life. Indigenous peoples across the continent drew on the astringent, tannin-rich roots, bark, leaves, and berries for a wide range of traditional remedies, from teas for sore throats and digestive complaints to dressings for the skin. The inner bark and berries yielded yellow and red dyes, the leaves tanned leather light and supple, and the dried leaves of several species were mixed with tobacco and other plants in traditional smoking blends across the plains. This is one of the most useful woody genera in North America, hiding in plain sight on the highway bank.
How to make a jar of sumac-ade
Harvest two or three ripe, deep-red fruit clusters on a dry day. Break them up and drop them into a quart of cool water. Bruise the fruit gently with a spoon, then let it steep at room temperature or in indirect sun for two to four hours, tasting until the tartness is where you want it. Strain through a coffee filter or a doubled cloth to catch the fine hairs, sweeten to taste, and serve cold. If it comes out bitter, your water was too warm or you steeped too long.
A gentle caution: forage only where you are certain of the identification (red, upright, dry-ground fruit), and if you have a cashew or mango allergy, sample sparingly, since all three share the Anacardiaceae family.
VI.Placing sumac in the garden
The single most important design decision with a suckering sumac is made before you dig the hole: give it the right job. On a hot bank, a wild border, a naturalized edge, a roadside cut, or any broad sunny space that needs holding and could use a season of fire, the running colony is precisely the point. Plant it, stand back, and let it become the thicket it wants to be. Erosion control has rarely looked so good in October.
For tighter gardens, you have three honest options. Grow one of the naturally compact players (fragrant sumac, 'Gro-Low', or Michaux's sumac) that stay in scale by nature. Site a running species where a mowed lawn, a driveway, or a walkway forms a hard edge the suckers cannot cross, and simply mow off any that stray. Or commit to a single specimen and pull the root suckers each spring while they are soft, which takes about ten minutes a year once the plant settles. None of this is difficult. It only requires deciding, once, what you are asking the plant to do.
Taming the sucker: three quick methods
The mowed edge. Set the colony against turf, gravel, or pavement. Suckers that emerge in the mowed zone are cut off before they ever leaf out. This is the least work of all.
The annual pull. In spring, walk the colony's perimeter and pull or cut soft new suckers at the soil line. Do it while they are young and it is trivial; let them harden and you will need loppers.
The compact choice. If you truly want no running at all, plant fragrant sumac, 'Gro-Low', or Michaux's sumac, which stay put and spread only slowly.
One more practical note, then the good part. If you want the winter fruit, and you should, remember that most sumacs are dioecious. Set a female plant for the red cones, and make sure a male is somewhere in the neighborhood to pollinate her. In a naturalized planting of several plants this takes care of itself. In a one-shrub garden, ask us which sex you are getting, or plant a pair.
VII.Hardiness and habit at a glance
| Species | Mature size | Zones | Light | Habit | Signature |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rhus typhina | 15–30 ft | 3–8 | Full sun | Suckering thicket | Velvety stems, autumn fire |
| Rhus glabra | To small tree | 3–9 | Full sun | Suckering colony | Scarlet fall, winter panicles |
| Rhus aromatica | 2–12 ft | 3–9 | Sun / part shade | Variable, mounding | Fragrant leaf, early bloom |
| R. aromatica 'Gro-Low' | 1–2 ft × 6–8 ft | 3–9 | Sun / part shade | Spreading groundcover | Weed-smothering carpet |
| Rhus michauxii | 1–3 ft | 6–9 | Sun / light shade | Low rhizomatous | Endangered, conservation |
| Rhus microphylla | Large shrub | 6–10 | Full sun | Bushy, xeric | Feathery leaf, rose-purple fall |
| Rhus javanica (chinensis) | 15–25 ft | 5–9 | Sun / light shade | Fast large shrub | Winged rachis, Chinese gall |
Field Note · Zone figuresHardiness ranges are general guidance drawn from horticultural references and our own beds in Aiken; local siting, drainage, and provenance always matter more than a number on a map.
References and further reading
- bplant.org, "Staghorn Sumac (Rhus typhina)." bplant.org/plant/1228
- Encyclopaedia Britannica, "Sumac." britannica.com/plant/sumac
- U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, "Michaux's Sumac (Rhus michauxii)." fws.gov
- North Carolina Extension Gardener Plant Toolbox, "Rhus aromatica" and "Toxicodendron vernix." plants.ces.ncsu.edu
- Missouri Botanical Garden Plant Finder, "Rhus typhina." missouribotanicalgarden.org
- USDA Forest Service, Woody Plant Seed Manual, "Rhus L." fs.usda.gov
- American Indian Health & Diet Project, "Smooth, Staghorn, and Fragrant Sumac." aihd.ku.edu
- "Rhus coriaria L. (Sumac), a Versatile and Resourceful Food Spice," National Library of Medicine. ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
From the Nursery
Staghorn (Rhus typhina) and smooth sumac (Rhus glabra) are both freshly back in stock in one-gallon pots, propagated here in Aiken and ready for a hot, sunny bank that could use a season of fire. The rest of the genus, from the ground-hugging 'Gro-Low' to the federally endangered Michaux's sumac, is on the waitlist and worth watching for.
Browse the Rhus at Woodlanders
