Rhus copallinumL.

shining sumac

WFO wfo-0001049902 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Rhus copallinum, photographed by Nathan T. Jones
fig. a Nathan T. Jones, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-03 / obs. 205521827
Rhus copallinum, photographed by Gold eagle Kroll
fig. b Gold eagle Kroll, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205891384
Rhus copallinum, photographed by Joseph Aubert
fig. c Joseph Aubert, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205904786
Rhus copallinum, photographed by Clay Gibbons
fig. d Clay Gibbons, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 203316792
Rhus copallinum, photographed by Joseph Aubert
fig. e Joseph Aubert, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205700287
Rhus copallinum, photographed by Joseph Aubert
fig. f Joseph Aubert, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 204448952
Rhus copallinum, photographed by Ryan Sorrells
fig. g Ryan Sorrells, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205674343
Rhus copallinum, photographed by Nathan T. Jones
fig. h Nathan T. Jones, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205521923

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Confused withby our own model

These are not lookalikes we guessed at. Each one is a species our identification model genuinely mistook for this plant, and how many times. The error rate is published.

Flowering n = 1,046 observations

Peak flowering in Aug, from 1,046 community-annotated observations worldwide. This is a global aggregate, not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres, and citizen-science records cluster near cities, at weekends, and in spring. Where a species has fewer than 30 annotated records we do not draw this chart at all.

Also published as 28 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Rhus copallinum f. angustialata Engl.
  • Rhus copallinum f. copallinum
  • Rhus copallinum f. crispa Farw.
  • Rhus copallinum f. frondosa Fernald
  • Rhus copallinum f. integrifolia Engl.
  • Rhus copallinum f. latialata Engl.
  • Rhus copallinum f. serrata Engl.
  • Rhus copallinum subsp. leucantha (Jacq.) A.E.Murray
  • Rhus copallinum var. angustifolia Engl.
  • Rhus copallinum var. arborescens Demcker
  • Rhus copallinum var. copallinum
  • Rhus copallinum var. extensa Sprenger
  • Rhus copallinum var. latifolia Engl.
  • Rhus copallinum var. leucantha (Jacq.) DC.
  • Rhus copallinum var. nesophila House
  • Rhus copallinum var. obtusifolia (Small) Fernald & Griscom
  • Rhus copallinum var. salicifolia Demcker
  • Rhus lentiscifolia Stokes
  • Rhus leucantha Jacq.
  • Rhus obtusifolia Small
  • Rhus pistachiifolia Salisb.
  • Schmaltzia copallina (L.) Small
  • Schmaltzia leucantha (Jacq.) Small
  • Schmaltzia obtusifolia Small

and 4 more.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice, no toxicity claim and no native range, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.