Some wild plants can kill, and several can make you very sick. Eat nothing you have not positively identified, ideally with an experienced forager or a good regional field guide beside you.
With that said, sumac is one of the easier wild foods to learn. Staghorn sumac (Rhus typhina) and smooth sumac (Rhus glabra) grow across most of North America along roadsides, field edges and old clearings, and from late summer into fall they carry upright cones of fuzzy red berries. The fuzz is where the flavor lives. It is coated in acids that taste much like lemon, and soaking the berries in water turns it into a pink drink often called sumac lemonade or rhus juice.
Step 1: Identify staghorn or smooth sumac
Check for all of these together:
- Compound leaves. Each long leaf is made of many narrow leaflets, often 11 to 31 of them, arranged in pairs along a central stem, and each leaflet has a toothed, saw-like edge.
- Distinctive twigs. Staghorn sumac has young branches covered in velvety reddish-brown hair, like a deer’s antler in velvet. Smooth sumac has hairless twigs with a pale, powdery bloom that rubs off on your fingers.
- Red fruit held upright. The berries grow in dense, cone-shaped clusters that stand up at the tips of the branches and turn deep red.
- Milky sap. A broken leaf stem or twig oozes a white sap.
Poison sumac (Toxicodendron vernix) is the one to rule out, and its sap causes a rash as bad as poison ivy’s. It differs on nearly every point. Its leaflets have smooth edges with no teeth, it grows in swamps, bogs and wet ground rather than dry fields, and its berries are whitish or pale gray to greenish, hanging down in loose, drooping clusters. A shrub with toothed leaflets and tight red cones pointing skyward is not poison sumac.
Sumacs belong to the cashew family. People with allergies to cashews, mangoes or pistachios should be cautious with sumac drinks, and anyone who reacts should stop.
Step 2: Collect the fruit clusters
The best time is mid to late summer and early fall, when the berries are fully red. Clusters still hang on through winter, but by then much of the flavor has weathered away and you will need more of them. Rain washes the acid off the berries, so pick after a few dry days rather than just after a storm. Chew a berry or two: a strong sour taste means a good drink.
For about half a gallon of lemonade, gather enough clusters to fill a container of a quarter to half a gallon. Skip plants along busy roads and sprayed ditches.
Step 3: Soak the clusters in cold water for 10 to 15 minutes
Use cold water. Hot water draws tannins out of the berries and stems, and the drink turns bitter and astringent.
Put the clusters in a large bowl of cold water, rub and crush them with your hands to loosen the berries, and leave them for 10 to 15 minutes. Strain a little into a glass to check. The color should fall somewhere between pink lemonade and cranberry juice. If the taste is weak, soak longer or add more fruit; if it is too sharp, add water.
For a small batch, stuff the clusters into a clean sock or cloth bag and let it steep in a jug. Lift the bag out when the drink is strong enough, and there is nothing left to strain.
Step 4: Strain out the berries and twigs
Pick out the stems and most of the berries by hand, then pour the liquid through a clean cotton cloth, a double layer of cheesecloth or a sturdy paper towel into the jug you will keep it in. The fine cloth matters, because the tiny hairs on the berries are unpleasant in the throat. In the field, a thick wad of clean, unsprayed long grass makes a rough first filter.
Drink it plain or sweeten it with sugar or honey. Keep it cold and use it within a couple of days.
What it offers
Sumac drink is tart and refreshing and contains some vitamin C. Various parts of the plant also have a long history in folk medicine, where leaf teas and bark decoctions were used for complaints such as diarrhea and fever. Those uses are traditional and unproven, so treat the drink as a refreshment.