Sumac

• 1. Introduction

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  Sumac was packed into the cargo of an 11th-century ship that sank off the coast of Rhodes. Archaeologists excavated the wreck in the 1970s and found commercial quantities of sumac drupes aboard. No one can say what the merchants intended. The berries could have been headed for a kitchen as a spice, for a healer as medicine, or for a workshop as dye. That uncertainty suits the plant, which has served cooks, physicians and leather makers alike. Why does its name mean red? How did a shrub with tart berries end up on tables from the Levant to Central Asia? Why did shippers worry about the dust of the dried fruit settling on marble? And why must a cook learn to tell it apart from poison sumac?

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• 2. A Name Meaning Red

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  The Syriac word summāqa means red. Arabic borrowed it as summāq, Mediaeval Latin turned it into sumach, and Old French settled on sumac in the 13th century. The name, in other words, is a colour, and the plant's crimson fruit still matches it.

  The scientific name has a murkier history. Rhus comes from the Ancient Greek rhous, which referred to Rhus coriaria. Where the Greek word itself came from is unknown. Some linked it to the verb rheō, meaning to flow, but scholars now reject that idea.

  Sorting out which plants belong under the name has taken botanists a long time. In 1825, de Candolle proposed dividing the genus into 5 sections. At its widest, Rhus held over 250 species and was the largest genus in the cashew and mango family, Anacardiaceae. Later authors split off relatives such as Cotinus, Duckera, Malosma, Metopium, Searsia and Toxicodendron, leaving a narrower Rhus. One scheme divides that narrower group into two subgenera, Rhus with about 10 species and Lobadium with about 25. Molecular research suggests the narrow genus forms a single natural branch, though the subgenera do not.

  Common estimates put the sumacs at roughly 35 species. Plants of the World Online, as of November 2024, accepts 54. Those accepted species are spread across several continents, and a handful survive only as fossils.

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• 3. Sumacs Around the World

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  Rhus coriaria goes by two common names, Sicilian sumac and Tanner's sumac, and it is the species cooks reach for most often. Its range covers Asia, North Africa and southern Europe. There it grows alongside Chinese sumac, Rhus chinensis, and Rhus potaninii, which is known as Potanin's lacquer tree or the Chinese varnish tree.

  Sumacs grow on nearly every continent except Antarctica and South America. Hawaii has its own, Rhus sandwicensis, called neneleau or Hawaiian sumac. Another species, Rhus taitensis, ranges from northeast Australia through Malesia and Micronesia to French Polynesia.

  North America holds the largest number by far, and its common names read like a field guide. There are fragrant, smooth, staghorn, winged or shining, lemonade, sugar, desert or littleleaf, prairie, skunkbush and evergreen sumacs. Two named hybrids also exist. One pairs smooth sumac with staghorn sumac, and the other pairs smooth sumac with Michaux's sumac.

  The family tree reaches deep into the past as well. Five fossil species are listed. Four of them come from the Ypresian of Washington, including Rhus boothillensis and Rhus garwellii. A fifth, Rhus rooseae, comes from the Middle Eocene of Oregon. The living berries are another matter, and in kitchens from Aleppo to Armenia they are ground into a crimson powder.

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• 4. How Sumac Spreads

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  A sumac can stand anywhere from 1 to 10 metres tall, as a shrub or a small tree. The plants are dioecious, which means male and female flowers grow on separate individuals. The leaves of the type species are pinnately compound, divided into paired leaflets along a central stalk. Some species instead have three leaflets or a single simple blade.

  Flower clusters are dense panicles or spikes between 5 and 30 centimetres long. Each flower is tiny, with five petals, and may be greenish, creamy white or red. The fruits that follow are reddish, thin-fleshed drupes covered with hairs in varying amounts. They crowd together at the branch tips in dense clusters that people sometimes call sumac bobs.

  Seed travel is left to wildlife. Birds and other animals eat the fruit and scatter the seeds in their droppings. Underground, rhizomes send up new shoots, and over time a single plant grows into a large clonal colony.

  That habit makes sumac stubborn to remove. Mowing is a poor control, because the springy wood is left as jagged, sharp-pointed stumps and the plant quickly regrows. Goats have long been considered a quick and efficient remedy, since they eat the bark and so discourage new shoots. A shallow root can send up small shoots some distance from the main tree. Root pruning therefore keeps sumac in check without eliminating it altogether.

  Gardeners, meanwhile, plant fragrant, littleleaf, smooth and staghorn sumac on purpose, either as wild types or as cultivars.

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• 5. On the Plate

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  Sumac's sourness comes from high amounts of malic acid. The dried fruits of some species are ground into a tangy crimson spice that is popular in many countries. The species most often used is Rhus coriaria, whose drupes become a reddish-purple powder. It adds a tart, lemony note to salads and meat.

  In Arab cuisine, sumac is a garnish on meze dishes such as hummus and tashi, and it is commonly added to falafel. In Aleppo, Syria, it is a main ingredient of Kubah Sumakieh. Across the Levant it goes into salads, and it is central to the Palestinian dish musakhan. It also appears in the Levantine spice mixture za'atar.

  Elsewhere, Afghan, Armenian, Iraqi, Iranian and Mizrahi cooks add it to rice and grilled meats. Armenian, Azerbaijani, Central Asian, Syrian, Iraqi, Jordanian, Palestinian, Lebanese, Turkish and Kurdish kitchens use it in salads and in lahmajoun.

  Medieval Europe had its turn as well. From the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries, sumac appeared often in cookbooks used by wealthy households. One stew, called sumāqiyya, was usually written by Europeans as somacchia.

  The berries also make drinks. Steep the fruits in water, strain out the hairs that can irritate the mouth or throat, and add honey or sugar, and the result is a traditional pink lemonade. In North America, smooth sumac, three-leaf sumac and staghorn sumac give a similar drink called sumac-ade, Indian lemonade or rhus juice. The drupes are soaked in cool water and rubbed to release their essence. The liquid is then strained through cotton cloth and sweetened.

  The spice even has a place in ritual. Sumac is a symbolic item on the Haft-sin table set for Nowruz, the Persian New Year.

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• 6. Leather, Ink and Dye

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  The Hebrew name og ha-bursaka'im means tanner's sumac, and the Latin name of Rhus coriaria says the same thing. The reason is tannin. The leaves and bark of most sumac species are rich in it, and many cultures around the world have used them to make leather. The tannin is mostly of the pyrogallol type and goes into vegetable tanning. Notable sources include the leaves of Rhus coriaria, the Chinese gall on Rhus chinensis, and the wood and roots of Rhus pentaphylla. Leather tanned with sumac comes out flexible, light in weight and light in colour. Morocco leather is one example.

  The same dyeing power caused trouble at sea and on the road. Sumac was shipped as a fine floury substance in sacks, a light cargo set beside heavy goods such as marble. Marble was the casualty. One account warns that when sumac dust settles on white marble, the result "is not immediately apparent." Once the dust becomes wet, "or even damp," it becomes "a powerful purple dye, which penetrates the marble to an extraordinary depth."

  Ink was another use. Ibn Badis describes a formula for red ink made from leeched sumac mixed with gum.

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• 7. Medicine and Odd Uses

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  Medieval physicians treated several different ailments with sumac. The practice was strongest in West, Central and South Asian countries, where the plant was easier to find than in Europe. A modern clinical study found that dietary sumac lowers blood pressure in patients with hypertension and can serve as an adjunctive treatment.

  Smaller uses are scattered across the plant. Some beekeepers burn dried sumac bobs as fuel for their smokers. The stems have a soft pith at the center that is easily removed, which makes them useful in traditional Native American pipemaking. They were commonly used as pipe stems in the northern United States. Native Americans also combine the leaves and drupes of smooth, three-leaf and staghorn sumac with tobacco in traditional smoking mixtures.

  Dried sumac wood has one more oddity. It fluoresces under long-wave ultraviolet radiation.

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• 8. Poison Namesakes

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  Poison ivy, Toxicodendron radicans, was once filed under Rhus as Rhus toxicodendron. Poison oak, Toxicodendron diversilobum, was Rhus diversiloba, and poison sumac, Toxicodendron vernix, was Rhus vernix. All three produce urushiol, an allergen that can cause severe delayed hypersensitivity reactions.

  True sumacs offer an easy visual test. Poison sumac has white drupes, which look quite different from the red drupes of the true Rhus species.

  The boundaries are still being redrawn. The Mysore sumac, formerly Rhus mysorensis, now sits in the genus Searsia.

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