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Updated: June 19, 2025
Red-stalked clusters of black berries hang from the vines of the Virginia creeper among leaves just touched with the hectic flame that tells of their passing, all too soon. At the sign of the sumac, tall torches of garnet berries rise. Down the bank, the bittersweet sends trailing arms jeweled with orange-colored pods just opening to display the scarlet arils within.
The white clover flow was over and the bees were beginning to work upon the earliest blossoms of the dwarf sumac. Sitting in front of the hives soon after the renewed activity commenced, I noticed a peculiarly rank odor on the air, and saw that the bees in vast numbers were rising and making for a pasture somewhere over the sprout-land that lay to the north of the hives.
The Girl raised on her elbow and looked at the hedge. "I see it," she said. "The berries are green now. I suppose they change colour as they ripen." "Yes," said the Harvester. "And you must not confuse them with sumac. The leaves are somewhat similar, but the heads differ in colour and shape. The sumac and buckeye you must not touch, until we learn what they will do to you.
The fruit of the sumac comes the nearest to being a cheat of anything I know of in nature a collection of seeds covered with a flannel coat with just a perceptible acid taste, and all highly colored. Unless the seed itself is digested, what is there to tempt the bird to devour it, or to reward it for so doing?
The crispness and freshness that came into the air always expanded his lungs and made his muscles more elastic and powerful. He had the full delight of the eye in the glorious colors that came over the mighty wilderness. He saw the leaves a glossy brown, or glowing in reds or yellows. The sumac bushes burned like fire. Everything was sharp, clear, intense and vital.
But I have sometimes caught it; and then as the season advances, and flow after flow comes on with the breaking of the great floral waves, I get other flavors, pure white clover, wild raspberry, golden sumac, pearly white clethra, buckwheat, black as axle grease, and last of all, the heavy, rich yellow of the goldenrod.
The youthful Night Hawk was particularly proud of an ugly knife-slash, with which the Black Snake had decorated his chest nay, I suspected him of introducing sumac juice to make it larger and more showy but said nothing, as these people knew well enough how to care for their bodies.
At dusk she repeatedly dashed toward the underbrush; but the Cardinal, with endless patience and tenderness, maneuvered her to the sumac, until she gave up, and beneath the shelter of a neighbouring grapevine, perched on a limb that was the Cardinal's own chosen resting-place, tucked her tired head beneath her wing, and went to rest.
Only that morning he had swelled with pride as he heard Mrs. Jay tell her quarrelsome husband that she wished she could exchange him for the Cardinal. Did not the gentle dove pause by the sumac, when she left brooding to take her morning dip in the dust, and gaze at him with unconcealed admiration? No doubt she devoutly wished her plain pudgy husband wore a scarlet coat.
On the sunny bank opposite there was a thicket of sumac trees reddening to the autumn heat; the wild vine was climbing upon them, making their foliage the more dense, and at their roots, by the edge of the stream, the golden rod was massed. On the bank on which they stood the colouring was more quiet.
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