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The Monday Garden, January 23, 2005, Issue 148 (revised October 2, 2005)
Eco-gardening at its best

You came across a tree with long palm-like tropical leaves. What is it? In New England, it is mostly likely to be ailanthus, sumac, walnut or ash. Ailanthus (Ailanthus altissima), the Tree of Heaven, Asia, and Brooklyn is often considered by naturalists and homeowners alike to be a menace to society with little redeeming value for wildlife. In contrast, smooth sumac (Rhus glabra) and staghorn sumac (Rhus tyhina) are great native Americans, as useful to humans as to our smaller residents. The black walnut (Juglans nigra), another great American, is cultivated in the wild by squirrels who adore these tall, graceful hardwoods, perhaps even more than humans do. The ailanthus is from the Quassia family of tropical plants, the sumacs are cashew family, and the black walnut comes from the walnut family which includes hickories and pecans. Our wonderful native ash trees are olive family members so can be distinguished from the others by the oppositely arranged branches and leaf stalks.

Picture: In the Hoyt Street Alley, young ailanthus (Ailanthus altissima) leaf out in front of the alley’s resident wild crabapple and shaggy bark hickory. Note the bright red-orange color of the new leaves; the greenness of the young trunks and the polka-dot pattern of the lenticels (pores). Stamford CT 2004

The ailanthus, sumacs, ashes, and black walnut come from totally different families and backgrounds, but can you tell them apart? All have long, palm-like compound leaves but there are major differences in flower, fruit, bark, bud, and leaf shape. This article covers the ailanthus and the sumacs. The black walnut is the subject of Issue 149 (January 30, 2005). Some of the ash trees are pictured in Issue 138 (November 14, 2004)

Eco-gardening is at its best in The Monday Garden
October 2, 2005, Issue 180

Staghorn sumac and smooth sumac (not close kin of the poison kin) are truly part of our great American heritage. The Monday Garden Issue 148 entitled “Ailanthus and Sumac”, January 23, 2005, covers sumac’s biological and cultural information. This article is dedicated to the plants’ year-round drop-dead gorgeous beauty. Strangely, while these sumacs are native American plants, the Europeans are said to appreciate them more as stunning shrubs and small trees for the garden.

Picture: detail of smooth sumac leaf, turning red at Scalzi Park in Stamford, CT, September 2005

Smooth sumac (Rhus glabra) and staghorn sumac (Rhus typhina) look pretty much a like except that the staghorn sumac has the noticeably hairy leaf stalks and fruit; the staghorn’s winter twigs can looks so furry that they resemble velvet-covered deer antlers, hence the name. The smooth sumac was named because it doesn’t have the hairs. The pictures here are of the wild smooth sumac that grows untended along the roadside in my neighborhood.

Eco-gardening is at its best in The Monday Garden
November 12, 2005, Issue 186

Staghorn sumac and smooth sumac (not close kin of the poison kin) are truly part of our great American heritage. The Monday Garden Issue 148 entitled “Ailanthus and Sumac”, January 23, 2005, covers sumac’s biological and cultural information. Issue 180, October 2, 2005, was dedicated to the plants’ year-round drop-dead gorgeous beauty. When Issue 180 was posted, the smooth sumac (Rhus glabra) was just beginning to turn so this issue is devoted to the amazing, breathing-taking autumn color of this “friend of the birds”.

Picture: smooth sumac, near the Mill River, Stamford, CT, November 2005

These pictures were taken in four Stamford CT locations where the birds have planted this friend of theirs:

• along a busy multi-lane urban highway, (Bedford Street at the First Presbyterian Church);
• in Scalzi Park, famous for Little League games;
• downtown, near the Mill River, behind another major highway, Washington Boulevard, in a section that’s been purchased by the town and is now fenced off, waiting to be part of the Mill River walk-park some day, and
• downtown behind the town mall, at the edge of a block-size excavation made, I think in the 1980’s for a building that never got built due to an economic recession, and which has not since found the right occupant and which is fondly (?) known locally as “The Hole In The Ground”.

If smooth sumac can do this well in a bad drought year with no help from humans, think how wonderful it would look in your garden, particularly if accompanied by adoring song birds.