Texas Gardening: Unknown plant, 0 by htop

htop wrote:
Veronica, thanks for all of your work. I found my sumac a couple of miles from my house in NW Bexar County. Evergreen sumac are about 1/4 mile from it. The soil is very limestoney and dry most of the time. The leaves have no odor as far as I can tell. However, I smoke so I do not have a good sense of smell. The fruit may have a few hairs and compared to other sumac fruit, they are small.

I too have found plants in my area that are not shown as being here on distribution maps. The USDA state distribution maps as well as the others depend upon people sending in data when they locate the plants in an area. Sooo, it is really sort of a guessing game at most. The maps provide a general area of a plant's habitat. I finally had to stop doing research today for a while because my eyes are bothering me and I have had a few migraines from the glare from the computer screen. This genus seems to have some hybridization between species as you said which makes it difficult to come up with an exact ID. I wish I could access the full HSTOR artcles because they really have a wealth of information ... just what I am usually looking for but can't access.

Linda, I have seen the littleleaf sumac in my area too. In 2004, I kept attempting to post a photo of the leaves and for some reason, the photo kept being rejected so I gave up. angele's photo is the best representation of its foliage in the PlantFiles.

http://davesgarden.com/pf/showimage/77485/

My photo of the littleleaf sumac fruit is below. It looks really large in the closeup. The leaves are small so the fruit appears large.


This message was edited May 9, 2007 8:16 PM