Rhus typhina L.

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Credits

Article from Bean's Trees and Shrubs Hardy in the British Isles

Recommended citation
'Rhus typhina' from the website Trees and Shrubs Online (treesandshrubsonline.org/articles/rhus/rhus-typhina/). Accessed 2024-03-29.

Genus

Common Names

  • Stag's-horn Sumach

Synonyms

  • R. hirta Sudw., not Engl.

Glossary

glabrous
Lacking hairs smooth. glabrescent Becoming hairless.
lanceolate
Lance-shaped; broadest in middle tapering to point.
panicle
A much-branched inflorescence. paniculate Having the form of a panicle.
imparipinnate
Odd-pinnate; (of a compound leaf) with a central rachis and an uneven number of leaflets due to the presence of a terminal leaflet. (Cf. paripinnate.)

References

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Credits

Article from Bean's Trees and Shrubs Hardy in the British Isles

Recommended citation
'Rhus typhina' from the website Trees and Shrubs Online (treesandshrubsonline.org/articles/rhus/rhus-typhina/). Accessed 2024-03-29.

A deciduous, small tree of gaunt, flat-topped habit, occasionally 25 or more feet high; branchlets thick, very pithy, yielding when cut a copious, yellowish-white, thick juice, soon turning black and hard on exposure; all the young bark is covered with short, dense, reddish hairs. Leaves pinnate, 1 to 2 ft long, consisting of from about thirteen to twice as many leaflets, which are oblong-lanceolate, 2 to 412 in. long, 12 to 1 in. wide, long-pointed, toothed, covered with brownish hairs when young, nearly or quite glabrous by autumn (the stalk remaining downy). Female flowers crowded in a dense, pyramidal, very hairy panicle 4 to 8 in. long; male flowers (which are borne on separate plants) greenish, and on a bigger, more open panicle. Fruits closely packed in dense panicles, and covered thickly with crimson hairs.

Native of eastern N. America, and cultivated in England since the reign of James I. The female plant is one of the handsomest of sumachs, for, added to its finely coloured fruit clusters, its leaves acquire in autumn rich shades of orange, red, and purple. The male plant, which colours its leaves too, is sometimes known as “R. viridiflora”. This tree succeeds remarkably well in some of the murkiest of London suburbs. It is sometimes used as a fine-foliaged summer shrub, grown in a group, and cut back every spring almost to the ground, the young shoots being afterwards reduced to one or two. Given liberal treatment at the root, erect stems 5 or 6 ft high with leaves up to 3 ft long will be produced, the leaflets correspondingly large.


'Bailtiger' PBR

Synonyms / alternative names
Tiger Eyes

A low-growing, golden-leaved cultivar of great merit.


'Dissecta' ('Laciniata')

Leaflets very handsomely cut (R. typhina var. laciniata Manning ex Rehd., not Wood; R. typhina f. dissecta Rehd., R. typhina var. filicina Sprenger).’Dissecta’ was found at the end of the last century by J. W. Manning, a nurseryman of Reading, Massachusetts, who propagated and distributed it as R. typhina laciniata, but this name had been used earlier for another variant (see below). Besides being a beautiful foliage plant, it colours brilliantly in the autumn. A.M. 1910.


f. laciniata (Wood) Rehd

Leaves and bracts more or less laciniate; inflorescence often partly transformed into contorted bracts. A monstrous form said to be fairly common in the wild. Not to be confused with ‘Dissecta’, often known as ‘Laciniata’.