Fragrant Sumac

Size, growth and what to expect

Its growth is rated anywhere from slow to fast, so our growth estimator uses the medium rate, about a foot and a half a year. It stands 2 to 6 feet tall and 6 to 10 feet wide in gardens. Wild plants reach 8 feet.

Yellowish flowers open from March to May, before the leaves, from catkins formed the summer before. On female plants the fuzzy red fruit, a quarter inch across, ripens from June to August and can hang on into March. Turkeys, ruffed grouse, robins and flickers eat it, along with raccoons, opossums and chipmunks. Caterpillars of the red-banded and banded hairstreaks feed on it.

It grows wild from Quebec and Vermont south to the Florida panhandle and west to South Dakota and Texas, on glades, ledges and rocky open woods. In New England it is native in Connecticut and Vermont, and the plants farther east, in Massachusetts, are considered introduced. Connecticut lists its native plants as endangered, and Indiana lists the dune variety, beach sumac, as threatened.

How to grow Fragrant Sumac

Fragrant sumac does best in full sun and also takes part shade. It wants a well-drained soil, dry to average. It grows in clay, sand or shallow rocky ground, acid or alkaline, but not in poorly drained soil. Plant it 5 feet from a wall, and set plants 5 feet apart to cover a bank. At its size it can go within 15 feet of overhead wires.

Saplings ship bare-root or potted. Plant them dormant, from leaf fall until bud swell, in a hole wider than the roots and no deeper. Set the crown at the soil line, put the native soil back in, and keep the mulch clear of the stems. Seed has a hard coat and a dormant embryo, so nick each seed with a file before sowing. Sow it a quarter inch deep outdoors in fall. For spring, hold it damp in the refrigerator for one to three months first.

Water every week or two through the first summer, then only in long droughts. Deer and rabbits seldom bother it, though in the Missouri Ozarks deer favor it as winter browse. Every three years in late winter, cut a third of the oldest stems to the ground to keep it dense. Stems root where they touch the soil, so the planting thickens on its own.

Most plants are male or female, and only females bear the red fruit, so plant three or more seedlings for a male and a female. A patch grown from one plant's suckers is often all male or all female. Leaf spots, galls and the sumac flea beetle mar the leaves at times but do little harm. Fusarium wilt can make stems wilt, with dark streaks in the sapwood.