Sumac
or Sumach, su'mak, a genus of well known shrubs and trees. The juice is usually resinous or milky. A score of species are distributed widely in the north temperate zone. The most noticeable American species is the staghorn sumac. The tips of the young branches are covered densely with velvety hairs, like the young antlers of the deer, whence the name. The wood is yellow. It is too small for the cabinetmaker. It was formerly used to make the spiles or spouts employed in tapping maple trees. Greenish-white, inconspicuous flowers are followed by small globular fruit in thick, pyramidal clusters. The fruit is covered densely with sour crimson hairs. The pyramids of fruit remain on the bush all winter. They form a favorite food of the chickadee and the partridge. For want of lemons the American colonists used to steep the berries for a cooling drink. The berries also yield a red dye, much used by the house-keeper before aniline dyes were on the market. The sweet-scented sumac is a low shrub with fragrant leaves and large, green, honey-scented flowers. It is much frequented by bees in early spring. The leaves of the smooth sumac of the uplands were mixed with smoking tobacco by the American Indians. The fruit is also serviceable in making cooling drinks and for medicine. The black or mountain sumac is a dwarf species. The dried leaves of this and the smooth sumac are used by the tanner. The Indians of the West split the twigs of an aromatic western species into strips and scrape them into splints with which they fashion baskets. The material is said to be quite as serviceable as willow twigs. There are two species of poisonous sumac in the eastern part of North America. One is the poison sumac, dogwood, or poison elder of the swamps. It is a shrub from six to eighteen feet high. The other is the well known poison ivy or poison oak. If either strike an exposed part of the person when the dew is on, painful blotches appear. The poisonous principle, it is said, resides not so much in the plant itself as in a minute fungus which lives on the plant as a host. The leaves of various sumacs are used in tanning fine leather. The Arab uses a decoction in tanning Morocco. Japanese lacquer is obtained from the sap of a sumac. Dried and ground sumac leaves are used in tanning leather. American tanners import a quarter of a million pounds, chiefly from Italy. As compared with American sumac, the European article contains more tannin and stains leather less.