SUMAC • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Sumac

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/sˈumæk/ Listen

noun

Sumach, Sumac n. (Written also shumac)

(Bot.) Any plant of the genus Rhus, shrubs or small trees with usually compound leaves and clusters of small flowers. Some of the species are used in tanning, some in dyeing, and some in medicine. One, the Japanese Rhus vernicifera, yields the celebrated Japan varnish, or lacquer.

The powdered leaves, peduncles, and young branches of certain species of the sumac plant, used in tanning and dyeing.

Poison sumac. (Bot.) See under Poison.

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Etymology of 'Sumac'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Sumac" Quotes from Famous Books

... pollen-carrying visitors generously, otherwise no seed can possibly be set. And how the autumnal landscape would suffer from the loss of the decorative, dark-red, velvety panicles! Beware only of the poison sumac's deadly, round grayish-white berries. ...

— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan

... actively poisonous in their nature, and introduce a possible element of danger to the wearer of the dyed article. For many years, almost the only method of dyeing cotton goods with the aniline colors consisted in a preliminary steeping in sumac or tannic acid, followed by a passage in some suitable compound of tin, and subsequent dyeing in the coloring matter. Sumac and tin have been used for two hundred years or more as the dyer's basis for a considerable number of shades of color from old dye-stuffs; there ...

— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XIX, No. 470, Jan. 3, 1885 • Various

... rhythm of joy in his heart, and tasting the satisfaction of labor as never before in his life, the days passed to Gilbert Potter. Then came the important Friday, hazy with "the smoke of burning summer," and softly colored with the drifts of golden-rods and crimson sumac leaves along the edges of the yet green forests. Easily feigning an errand to the village, he walked rapidly up the road in the warm afternoon, taking the cross-road to New-Garden just before reaching Hallowell's, and then struck to the right ...

— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor

... eagerly in summer; the copious spring in the bank at the foot of the old orchard which, in the severe drouths of recent years, holds out when other springs fail; the tiny but perennial spring issuing from under the huge tilted rock in the sumac field where the young cattle and the sheep of the mountain pasture drink and where we have all refreshed ourselves so many times; the spring from under a rocky eyebrow on the big side hill which is now piped to the house and which in my ...

— My Boyhood • John Burroughs

... once, at the close of a beautiful day's fishing on the Swiftwater, I came out, just after sunset, into a little open space in an elbow of the stream. It was still early spring, and the leaves were tiny. On the top of a small sumac, not thirty feet away from me, sat a veery. I could see the pointed spots upon his breast, the swelling of his white throat, and the sparkle of his eyes, as he poured his whole heart into a long liquid chant, the clear ...

— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke