Sumac

Here's another little friend of mine - sumac.

I've always liked sumac because it is easy to identify.  There's an absolute jungle of shrubs and trees out there in the world, and they can all look the same, but not sumac.  It's very distinctive, with its red bobs, which are called drupes.

The drupes can be used to make a kind of lemonade.  They have also been used as a spice, and a dye.  However, you'd want to be very sure what kind of sumac you were using.  Consult an expert to avoid ingesting anything toxic.

One common types of sumac is smooth sumac.  Another is staghorn sumac, which has a fuzzy texture to its branches, like velvet on antlers.  You can see that in this photo:

Sumac grows in stands.  You might see cutleaf sumac, a domestic variety, where the leaves are toothed, or jagged.  And then there is poison sumac, which has white drupes.  Avoid that like the plague.

The word "sumac" traces its etymology down through the ages, back through Old French,  Medieval Latin, Arabic and finally back Syriac.  I loved learning this, because I had figured it was a Native American word.  And what do you think that original Syriac word "summaq" meant?  Red.