Rhus typhina Seeds | Staghorn Sumac
LATIN NAME: Rhus typhina
COMMON NAME: Staghorn Sumac
Plant Profile
The name staghorn comes from the young branches, which are covered in a dense rusty fuzz so that they look like the velvet of a deer’s new antlers, and that single trait is the fastest way to know the plant. No other common sumac has quite that furry, antler-like twig, and it persists long enough on the bare winter stem to identify the shrub when the leaves are down.
The leaves are large and pinnate, divided into many toothed leaflets, and in autumn they turn a bold red and orange. The flowers are small and greenish-yellow in dense upright panicles, and these are followed by the plant’s signature: tight clusters of small, hairy fruits that turn deep red and hold their colour through the winter, the part foraged for drink and spice.
The look-alikes are the other sumacs: Rhus glabra, the smooth sumac, lacks the furry twig, and Rhus aromatica, the fragrant sumac, is a low sprawling shrub with a strong scent when crushed. Rhus chinensis, the Chinese sumac, is a different species grown for its galls. The hairy antler twig and the upright red fruit cone mark typhina without doubt.
The pinnate leaf can span a long hand’s breadth, divided into many toothed leaflets that give the shrub its coarse, tropical look in summer before the red takes over. The young twigs are the identifying feature year-round: covered in a dense, rusty pubescence that catches the light, they are the reason for both the common and the scientific names. Older wood loses the fuzz and turns grey, so the velvet is a mark of youth and of the current season’s growth.
Staghorn sumac is a classic early coloniser, one of the first woody plants to move onto bare road cuts, old fields and strip-mined ground, where its suckering root system holds the soil while slower trees establish. It is dioecious, with separate male and female plants, and only the female carries the showy fruit cluster that foragers want. Left alone it forms a thicket that shelters birds and small mammals through the cold months.
Science & Biotechnology
The red fruits are sour with malic acid and carry vitamin C, which is why a cold infusion of the crushed drupes, often called sumac-ade, is a traditional tart drink and why the dried, ground fruit is a tangy spice across Middle Eastern cooking. The surface of the drupe is also rich in tannins and gallic acid, and the fruit carries anthocyanin pigments that give the cluster its lasting red.
Alongside the tannins, extracts of the fruit and leaf show ursolic acid and a range of flavonoids that researchers screen for antioxidant activity, which keeps the species in the literature well beyond its ornamental use. The chemistry is shared broadly with the genus but the fruit’s malic-acid sourness is the trait that makes typhina the culinary sumac.
The high tannin content has long made sumac a source for tanning extracts, and the plant’s willingness to colonise bare, poor ground makes it a candidate for erosion control and for reclaiming disturbed sites. Its dense root suckering stabilises banks and road cuts, so it is planted as much for land repair as for the autumn show.
Uses & Benefits
In use the dried fruit is rubbed into a coarse powder and sprinkled over salads, meats and rice for a lemony sharpness, or steeped in cold water and strained for a pink, vitamin-rich drink. Ecologically the persistent clusters feed birds through the cold months, and the summer flowers support pollinators, so a sumac thicket earns its keep on several fronts at once.
Growing from Seed
Sumac seed benefits from a cold, moist rest and from removal of the fleshy coat, so clean the drupes, stratify in damp sand, then sow in a gritty, well-drained medium and keep it lightly moist. Sow shallowly and be patient; the seedling is slow to appear but then grows with vigour once the root takes.
Set young plants out when they carry three or four true leaves and stand ten to fifteen centimetres tall, spacing them two to three metres apart because the clump will spread by suckers. Water in well and then only when the top layer dries; prune the suckers each season if you want a single trunk, or let it form the natural thicket. Watch for leaf spot in humid summers and for scale on older wood; both are eased by air movement and a yearly cut.
A spring mulch of coarse wood chip keeps the shallow roots cool and cuts the weed competition that otherwise crowds a young thicket, and a single annual feed of a balanced fertilizer is enough for a plant that is otherwise content on poor ground. If you want the red fruit for the table, leave the female stems unpruned and net the clusters only if birds strip them before you harvest; the drupes are best collected after the first light frost when the colour is deepest.
Our Take
I let one sumac thicket run at the dry edge of the yard for the red winter cones, and the genus offers close kin: Chinese sumac for its galls and fragrant sumac for the low ground cover. The same family shows up as cashew, a reminder of where sumac sits in the tree of life.
Related Reading
More species in the same orbit as Staghorn Sumac: