Audubon® Native Smooth Sumac

Sizzling hot fall color that will set your landscape ablaze! If fall is your favorite season, have we got a treat for you. Smooth Sumac responds to the cooling temperatures of autumn with foliage that transforms from emerald-green to raging red. Along the way, it may show a mix of green, yellow, orange, red, and purple leaves all at once. When the show is over, you’ll look forward to the arrival of songbirds, who come to nibble the red fruits on female plants in winter. Veeries, phoebes, catbirds, cardinals, flickers, chickadees, robins, and juncos are some of the many birds that enjoy Smooth Sumac seeds.

Many people are afraid of Smooth Sumac, because they confuse it with the painfully rash-inducing Poison Sumac that grows in swamps. Smooth Sumac is perfectly safe to touch and does not grow in permanently wet soil. It is found in well-drained, moist to dry sites all over the U.S.—in fact, it grows wild in every one of the lower 48 states! Smooth Sumac is a hit with pollinators when its fat clusters of greenish-yellow flowers bloom in summer. Some native bees also make use of the stems by overwintering inside of them.

Smooth Sumac usually takes the form of a slowly spreading clump, but you can also train this Accent into a picturesque tree. Be vigilant about removing new shoots, and the plant will put its energy into making an interesting, single-trunked specimen. The nation’s largest tree-form Smooth Sumac, in Washington State, stands 35 feet tall and has a trunk eight inches thick!