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Anacardiaceae family

Winged Sumac Rhus copallinum

Native
Deer-resistant — Low palatability to browsing deer. Usually passed over, but no plant is truly deer-proof when food is scarce.

Winged Sumac is a perennial tree native to Canada and the lower 48 states. It grows to 8 ft and blooms Apr in part shade – shade, with brown fruit.

Growing & care

USDA PLANTS · TRY
Conditions
Sources · Conditions
USDA PLANTS — Sun · Soil & moisture
USDA — SoilPH — Soil pH
USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — Fertility Requirement / Soil Adaptation — Fertility need · Adapts to
USDA — Temp-Min °F — Hardiness
Sun
Part shade – shade
Soil & moisture
Low moisture
Soil pH
5.3–7.5
Fertility need
Low
Adapts to
Coarse (sandy), Medium (loam), Fine (clay)
Hardiness
USDA zone 5+
Size & form
Sources · Size & form
USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — Height, Mature — Height
USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — Planting Density (per acre) — Spacing
USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — Growth Rate / Spread / Growth Form / Lifespan / Active Growth Period / Seed Period — Spread · Growth rate · Growth form · Active growth
USDA PLANTS — Lifespan
TRY Plant Trait Database (CC BY 4.0) · USDA PLANTS — Foliage
USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — Fruit/Seed Color / Fruit Persistence — Fruit
Lifespan: USDA’s lifespan scale for trees: short = under ~100 years · moderate = 100–250 · long = over 250. Balsam fir and other short-lived conifers are genuinely short for a tree, not short like an annual.
Height
8 ft
Spacing
4–8 ft apart from USDA planting density
Spread
Rapid
Growth rate
Moderate
Growth form
Rhizomatous
Lifespan
Perennial · moderate
Foliage
Broadleaf · coarse texture
Active growth
Spring & summer
Fruit
Brown persists into winter
In the garden
Sources · In the garden
USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — Propagation Method / Commercial Availability — Propagate by · In the trade
USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — Germination (cold stratification) — Seed starting
USDA PLANTS — Seed Period — Seeds ripen
USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — Foliage Texture / Browse Palatability / Resprout — Deer browsing · Resprouts if cut
Propagate by
Seed, Bare root, Container
Seed starting
No stratification needed
Seeds ripen
Summer – Autumn seed-collection / harvest window
In the trade
Routinely available
Deer browsing
Low often deer-resistant
Resprouts if cut
Yes regrows after top-kill
Shrub layer — Sits in the shrub of a layered food forest or polyculture.Open guide →
derived roles
The garden year bloom → fruit → fall colour
J
F
M
A
M
J
J
A
S
O
N
D
Bloom
Fall colour
Bloom (the flower's colour) Fall colour
Bloom · Apr — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — BloomPeriod
Fall colour · 796 obs · USA-NPN observed “coloured leaves” — timing varies by site & year
When to sow · for your area

Sow timing keys off your local last- and first-frost dates.

Species characteristics from USDA PLANTS (public domain) + TRY (CC BY) — general guidance, not a guarantee for your exact site. Deer "browsing" is documented palatability, not a deer-proof claim.

Wildlife & pollinators

How pollinator value is scored →
❧ Caterpillar hosts ~58 caterpillar species

Rhus supports ~58 caterpillar species.

Native butterfly & moth caterpillars are the base of the terrestrial food web — most songbirds rear their young almost entirely on them. As a host for native Lepidoptera this is a strong genus.

Recorded feeding on Rhus in North America, including:

Antepione thisoaria · Variable Antepione ✦ Caloptilia rhoifoliella · Sumac Leafblotch Miner ✦ Calycopis cecrops · Red-Banded Hairstreak ✦ Chloropteryx tepperaria · Angle-Winged Emerald ✦ Citheronia regalis · Regal Moth ✦ Datana perspicua · Spotted Datana ✦
+ 8 more species →
Dichorda iridaria · Showy Emerald ✦ Nemoria bifilata · geometer (inchworm) moth ✦ Nemoria rubrifrontaria · Red-Fronted Emerald ✦ Peridroma saucia · Pearly Underwing ✦ Acronicta rubricoma · Ruddy Dagger Moth Actebia fennica · owlet moth Actias luna · Luna Moth Amorbia humerosana · White-Lined Leafroller
Keystone count (genus-level) from Warren II 2026 (CC0) · Tallamy host-use records. Named species (a documented Nearctic sample, not exhaustive) from NHM HOSTS (CC0). ✦ = recorded on this exact species.
✦ Bees 65 bee visitors
Visitor records (observations, not exhaustive) from Noori et al. 2026 (CC BY 4.0) · GloBI → · ✦ = pollen-specialist bee (Smith et al. 2024)
Wildlife & visitors 25 birds · 20 nectaring

Open records of who else uses Winged Sumac — a generalist food-web signal, kept separate from the keystone Ecological Value.

20 adult butterfly & moth species are recorded nectaring at its flowers — the most-recorded:

Cupido comyntas · Eastern Tailed Blue Calycopis cecrops · Red-Banded Hairstreak Atteva aurea · Ailanthus Webworm Moth Strymon melinus · Gray Hairstreak Cisseps fulvicollis · Yellow-Collared Scape Moth Limenitis archippus · Viceroy
Interaction records (observations, not exhaustive) from GloBI → (CC0). Counts are distinct species; names are the most-recorded. Common names from Wikidata (CC0).
Species thumbnails re-hosted from iNaturalist — Creative Commons, credited per image (hover for credit). Click any species to see it on iNaturalist. Not exhaustive; many taxa have no openly-licensed photo yet.
Frequently grows with

Across 429 U.S. vegetation-survey plots that recorded Winged Sumac, these catalog species turned up most often in the same plot — a real field co-occurrence signal, not a planting prescription.

Longleaf Pine · 69% Common Persimmon · 65% Narrowleaf Silkgrass · 62% Anisescented Goldenrod · 56% Cat Greenbrier · 55% Dwarf Huckleberry · 52% Western Brackenfern · 49% Dixie Whitetop Aster · 49%
"%" = share of this plant's plots that also held the species. From sPlotOpen → (Sabatini et al. 2021, CC BY 4.0) — open vegetation plots: wild community composition, not garden design.
How we know this (1) Methods & honest limits
Leaf build Direct fact

We read each species’ measured specific leaf area (leaf area per unit dry weight) from the Global Spectrum dataset and band it: thin & fast (high SLA), medium, or thick & tough (low SLA). The global median is about 10 mm²/mg.

Honest limits: A species-mean from pooled measurements — individual plants vary with light and site. A broad strategy signal, not a precise per-plant figure.

Díaz, S. et al. (2022) The global spectrum of plant form and function: enhanced species-level trait dataset. Scientific Data 9:755.
Derived values are computed from open data by a published method — labelled, cited, and never shown as a direct observation. Full methodology →
Sources for this entry (33) Open & cited
[01] Scientific name & family — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)
[02] Growth habit & duration — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)
[03] Native status & distribution — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)
[04] Common name — USDA PLANTS (via GBIF)
[18] Invasive / introduced status — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — native status
[19] Wetland indicator — USACE National Wetland Plant List (2022)
[21] Ecological value — Warren II 2026 (CC0) · Tallamy host-use counts
[23] Conservation rank — NatureServe Explorer (CC BY)
[25] Functional traits — TRY Plant Trait Database (CC BY 4.0)
[26] Wildlife & visitors — GloBI — Global Biotic Interactions (CC0)
[29] Bee specialists — Smith et al. 2024 (Zenodo, CC BY 4.0)
[30] Flower-visitor value (derived) — Noori et al. 2026 (CC BY 4.0) · GloBI
[31] Caterpillar host count — Warren II 2026 (Dryad, CC0) · Tallamy host-use counts
[32] Caterpillar species — NHM HOSTS (CC0)
Spot an error or have a better photo? Every field links to its source, and the whole dataset is open.
Cite this page Open data, please attribute

PlantKey’s data is open under CC BY-SA 4.0 — free to reuse and adapt, with attribution and the same licence. Photos keep their own per-image licence + credit (see Sources above).

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