Smooth Sumac
Rhus glabra
Sumac family (Anacardiaceae)
Smooth Sumac is easy to spot in the fall with its brilliant red leaves. Red in tight pyramid-shaped clusters are a common sight throughout the eastern United States and scattered areas of the West in the late fall and winter. is attractive to wildlife. Smooth Sumac hairless twigs and leaves give the plant its specific epithet, "glabra." "Rhus" is the classical Greek name for another member of this .
lanceolate -- Lance-shaped. Long, wider in the middle.
A leaf is compound when multiple leaflets are on the same stem.
A perennial plant lives and blooms for many years.
leaflets -- Each little leaf-like thing in a compound leaf is a leaflet.
pubescent -- downy; covered with short, soft, erect hairs.
drupe -- A fruit in which an outer fleshy part surrounds a hardened shell containing a seed. A peach is a drupe. A raspberry is composed of drupelets.
Like the teeth on a saw, leaves and other surfaces can have toothed edges.
persistent -- When the leaves of a plant fail to fall off in the fall they are persistent. Flowers that stay around after fruiting would be persistent.
Deciduous plants are those that lose all of their leaves for part of the year.
fruit -- any seed-bearing structure in flowering plants. It is formed from the ovary after flowering.
pinnate -- A compound leaf with two rows of leaflets.
The botanical term "berry" is different from common usage. Strawberries and raspberries are not berries. But a tomatoe is. A true berry is a fruit with the seeds immersed in the pulp.
A panicle is a much-branched inflorescence. The bottom flowers in a panicle open first.
genus -- A subdivision of a botanical Family in which all members have a significant number of similar characteristics.
dioecious -- When male and female reproductive structures are on separate plants.
leaves alternate along the main stem and are attached singly.