More Autumn Color

The staghorn sumac bushes are ablaze right now but I like this row of red and green leaves.  It is also called the "Lemonade Tree" because the berries have a lemony, tart taste. "Native Americans of the Northeast, where sumac abounds, have used this fruit for millennia to make a tart drink and the white settlers quickly learned this technique too. The natives also used its narrow branches, with pithy centers, to fashion pipe stems after they removed the pith to hollow them out. And there are reports that they also mixed dried sumac leaves with tobacco and placed that in their pipes."  There is a poison sumac as well, but it is easy to tell them apart as the poison variety has white berries that hang down while the staghorn sumacs are a velvety red and grow upright.