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The mystery flowering tree: It's a Sumac, KY Color writer says Comments re photo 50774 What is this tree? By Billy Joe Fudge, Retired District Forester Kentucky Division of Forestry I believe what you have here is an old fashioned, intergalactic, conundrumic mystery of almost mythic proportions. However and just short of having Mr. Spock do a mind-meld on you and Mrs. Marcum, I will attempt to wring an interpretation from this puzzling riddle. I must say, I see this collaboration of observer (mother-in-law) and photographer (son-in-law) as an almost assured conspiracy to attempt to render my powers of observation null and void. Yet, my powers of observation having been honed to a razors edge by decades of almost superhuman efforts to seek creative ways to defeat that Old Wildfire Demon while at the same time keeping me safe from harm, have enabled me to solve this riddle. Here in lies the problem. You are posing questions and making comments about one species of tree and have taken a photo of a different tree. The photo is of Sumac in its early flowering stage. We are all familiar with Sumac in that it grows in fence rows, old abandoned fields and is in essence an edge tree of the smallish variety. Your comments about it being a dominate feature in some forest situations leads me to believe that you are talking about Tree of Heaven or Ailanthus altissima. Tree of Heaven known in China as that "foul smelling tree" and in some circles in this country as the "Chicken _ _ _ _ Tree" is a mid sized tree which is found in an actual forest setting. In all fairness to you and Mrs. Marcum their flowers at certain stages closely resemble while in many Trees of Heaven the flowers can have a reddish hue. Additionally, they both have pinnately compound leaves but the leaflets on the Tree of Heaven are somewhat larger. The easiest way to identify them from a distance is height with Sumac being no more than 10 feet tall while Tree of Heaven can be up to 75 feet tall around our local area. And yes, Tree of Heaven is another invasive from China. Brought here around 1800 as an ornamental, it has proved to be very prolific and at least at this point in time, good for nothing commercially speaking. - Billy Joe Fudge [NO Return Address] Comments re photo 50774 What is this tree This story was posted on 2013-08-06 10:12:47
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