Tree Tuesday: Sumac, the flamboyant lifesaver

Colour, in winter, is precious. Wandering in the woods on a sun-hidden day, it’s easy to see the world the way the old black and white television sets presented it: black, white and numerous shades of grey. It’s an experience I rather love for it makes all the subtle nuances of winter colour and texture that much more noticeable. And when the rare reds, oranges or yellows burst on the scene, they seem positively exotic.

I had that experience last Saturday while cross-country skiing on Mount Royal. Alerted by the excited chirping of a chickadee, I paused to have a look around. Whoosh. A streak of red-orange passed my eye. A cardinal? I wondered, hoped. No, something a little bigger and, in my experience, more rare, at least in winter: A robin.

Robins are commonplace throughout the spring and summer but seeing a male in winter, his colours all the brighter in contrast to his white surroundings, was a first for me. Sorry I didn’t have a camera with me but I found this one, taken by Thomas P. LeBlanc for his blogsite Mon@rch: male robin perched on the sumac fruit.

Which brings me to the real subject of this column and the source of another winter red: the sumac, the staghorn sumac, to be precise, Rhus typhina. The one pictured at the top of this column is a member of Montreal’s most famous grove of staghorn sumac, the one that grows below the wall of the Mount Royal belvedere or, as it is officially known, the Kondiaronk Belvedere. Coincidentally, as I have learned through my internet research, robins and sumac fruit are often seen together in the winter as the birds, as a last resort, will eat the hair-covered seeds that, as a cluster, form the familiar red cone.

Why as a last resort? While I haven’t heard it from the robin’s beak, there is a good chance that the bird is not fond of the sour taste. In fact, the French name for the staghorn sumac is sumac vinaigrier; with the vinegar referring to the acidic taste of the fruit.  One blogger I discovered fittingly described an individual seed as tasting like a vitamin C tablet which makes sense given its high vitamin C content.

You see, this tree, much like the arborvitae, or Eastern white cedar I described last week, was a valuable winter source of vitamin C to native North Americans and to the European colonists with whom they they shared their pharmacopeia. I have tasted tisane made from the fruit and it tastes much like lemonade. Like the cedar, this tree saved human lives.

It has also saved many an animal not only due to its fruit but to its bark. Next time you pass by a staghorn sumac, stop to observe and touch the bark of the smallest branches. What does they remind you of? The hint is in the name; the soft and fuzzy, cinammon coloured branches resemble the antlers of a deer. Deer may not notice but they are nonetheless drawn to the tree — along with moose and rabbits — to browse on the twigs and bark.

If you come across sumac that have no red fruit, such as the colony growing in the abandoned Canadian Pacific trainyard (just south of the tracks where Henri-Julien stops) chances are the colony is composed of male clones. The sexes are separate but the trees can reproduce either sexually, via their pollen (male) and seed (female) flowers, or asexually, via their roots. That’s why you often find large clumps of them in disturbed areas such as growing in the gravel at the side of the highway or, in the case of the sumac colony below, on the slope beneath the lookout on Camilien Houde Road on Mount Royal, a spot where the City of Montreal dumps snow, excess gravel and other bits of organic debris.

Incidentally, the fact that the area is frequently disrupted makes for a very interesting collection of trees. Only the pioneers survive in such sites, the sun-loving, drought and salt-resistant species like the sumac, black locust (robinia faux-acacia) and trembling aspen (trembles), as well as a great variety of wild flowers.

Regarding the sumac, the only conditions it will not tolerate are shade and excessive humidity which is not surprising given its origins. This tree is a long way out of its original range. A member of the Anarcardiaceae family (that includes cashew and mango trees), there are only three members of the 100-species genus, Rhus, found in Canada. The rest are in Asia and southern Africa. Za’atar, that delicious Middle Eastern flat bread covered with a mixture of green spices is, in fact, the name of the spice that is composed of  dried thyme, roasted sesame seeds, salt and powdered sumac seeds. That sumac, I should point out is a not staghorn but the Middle Eastern Rhus coriaria. In fact, the word sumac originates from the Arabic summaaq and Farsi sommag.

Nevertheless, staghorn sumac is edible and medicinal and the various layers of its bark, its leaves, roots, branches and fruits were widely used by many native American peoples. Despite the tartness of the fruit, a pie, sweetened with maple syrup was made of the soaked berries. Dried berries were preserved for winter. The highly interesting website Littleflower’s Medicine of North American Plants gives ample description and quotations regarding the many other uses of the sumac.