A cardinal eats sumac in March. (Photo courtesy Nancy Holmes)
For a plant that humans (and other mammals, birds and bugs) have been eating for eons, sumac, surprisingly, is not often eaten in Maine. Part of the reason may be that everyone has heard of poison sumac, and not being familiar with wild plants in general, they fear all sumacs. But it’s easy to tell them apart. Staghorn sumac berries are really dark red! and poison sumac berries are white. In late summer and fall, people admire staghorn sumac’s fiery red leaves and pyramids of fuzzy red berries. When the leaves fall, the fuzzy, curved, twigs look like Dr. Seuss antlers in velvet.
The little trees grow in dense, round-topped groups; oldest, tallest trees in the middle, and shorter ones radiating out as the group grows. Sumacs are “dioecious,” meaning each tree is either female (berries) or male (pollen). The new trees send out underground rhizomes, that sprout as the same gender. Seeds may add diversity; but they only germinate if they pass through the digestion of a bird. Why? Maybe while birds eat berries in a female group, they may drop a male seed for pollen to increase berry production.
When Europeans arrived in Maine, they must have learned from Native Americans that sumac is food and medicine. But when we produced the familiar European foods, we seem to have lost touch with sumac. Sumacs grow around the world where the climate is warm or temperate. Sumac spice is a necessity in Middle Eastern and Mediterranean food.
Finally, Americans are coming back to sumac. You may have heard of sumac tea, and enjoyed its refreshing, rather lemony flavor. Amazon sells everything from sumac spice, and medicine, to sumac smoking mix, used by Native American. Hannaford now lists sumac spice! Herbalists offer sumac that “may help” as an antioxidant, lowering blood sugar and easing muscle pain. There must be scientists now, racing to turn the hopeful “may help” into “will help,” to make exciting new products.
Besides its other usefulness, sumac is a lifesaver for winter birds. You might see a whole flock of wintering robins filling their hungry crops with berries.
Here is my favorite sumac dish. But recently the bugs have gotten the berries before I did. One writer said not to let the bugs bother you. Just pick the clean berries off the outside of the clump. I dunno ‘bout that. This is a recipe I found somewhere, and improved, I think. Someone suggested adding beet juice for better color.
Sumac meringue pie
Sumac juice: Harvest a big, red sumac seed-head and examine it carefully: clean, fuzzy, little red berries jammed together on clean, green stems. No bugs, dirt, or frass, (a polite word for insect droppings and droolings) or pick off clean berries from the outside. Harvest 24 nice, big heads, or equivalent. (More if you want sumac-aid or tea.)
Soak about 12 sumac heads in 2 quarts room temperature water. Break apart and crush heads, and let soak a few hours.
Strip the berries off the stems, and discard enough stems to make room for 12 more heads. Soak again.
Strain the liquid through successively finer mesh, finishing with coffee filters. Go do something else while soaking and straining proceeds.
Three cups of juice and a baked crust
Pie filling
2 1/2 cups sumac juice (You can save stirring time by warming juice, while making the filling.)
4 eggs – separate and beat yolks with a 1/2 cup sumac juice. (Save whites for meringue)
1/4 cups sugar, 1/3cup cornstarch. Mix in a pot.
4 beaten egg yolks Add and whisk smooth.
2 1/2 cups warmed sumac juice. Add and bring to a boil, stirring. Boil one minute.
Make your favorite meringue with the 4 saved egg whites.
Bake at 325 degrees for 15-20 minutes or until gold.
(Nancy Holmes prowled Linekin Neck in Boothbay as a child, then an Illinois bottomland while earning a master’s degree in wildlife management. Once back in Maine, she raised children and kept assorted animals, wild and domestic. She and her Carolina dog roam their woods in Newcastle. Write to Holmes at castlerock@tidewater.net.)
