Scientific Name: Rhus glabra

Common Name: Smooth Sumac

Thomas Jefferson lists "sumach" as an ornamental native species in his Notes on the State of Virginia.[1]

Smooth sumac, a native of Eastern North America from Quebec to Georgia, has been in cultivation since the early 17th century. It arrived in Britain around 1726.[2]

Smooth sumac is a deciduous, North American shrub that forms brilliant scarlet, plume-like fruit clusters on the female plants. The glabrous leaves turn an intense red or orange-red in autumn.

- Peggy Cornett, n.d.

Primary Source References

1786 January 27. (Jefferson to John Bartram, Jr.). "Inclosed is a list of plants and seeds which I should be very glad to obtain from America for a friend here whom I wish much to oblige ... Rhus glabrum ...."[3]

Further Sources

References

  1. ^ Notes, ed. Peden, 41.
  2. ^ Alice M. Coats, Garden Shrubs and Their Histories (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992), 167.
  3. ^ PTJ, 9:228-30. Transcription available at Founders Online.