Southern Wetland Flora
Field Office Guide to Plant Species
Toxicodendron vernix (L.) Kuntze
- Family: Sumac (Anacardiaceae)
- Flowering: June-July
- Field Marks: This species has alternate, pinnately compound, toothless leaves and clusters of gray-white, spherical drupes.
- Habitat: Wet thickets, swamps, seepage slopes, and bogs.
- Habit: Shrub or small tree up to 25 feet tall.
- Stems: Slender, smooth or finely hairy.
- Leaves: Alternate, pinnately compound, with 7-13 leaflets; each leaflet oblong to elliptic, pointed at the tip, tapering to the base, without teeth, smooth or rarely finely hairy, up to 3 inches long.
- Flowers: Several in panicles up to 8 inches long, very small, white or greenish.
- Sepals: 5, green, united below.
- Petals: 5, white or greenish, free from each other.
- Stamens: 5.
- Pistils: Ovary superior.
- Fruits: Drupes spherical, gray-white, smooth, about 1/6 inch in diameter.
- Notes: All parts of the plant are poisonous to the touch. The leaves turn red in the autumn.
Previous Species -- Poison Oak (Toxicodendron quercifolia)
Return to Species List -- Group 5
Next Species -- American Elm (Ulmus americana)
