can you use staghorn sumac?
Yes.
In the midwest, there are large number of different "sumac" plants, but ONLY the staghorn sumac seed head is good for a seasoning. There may be some other variety in the middle-east that we don't know about, but if you go to a Lebanese restaurant, and shake some of the red powder onto your food, it tastes just like dried staghorn.
Other sumac varieties off the top of my head: Poison ivy, Poison oak, Fragrant sumac (complete with leaves of three, but does not cause rashes), and lastly: staghorn.
Poison sumac is also a sumac, but it is not found in our area, so I couldn't identify it if you rolled me in it.
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Oh No! Now you got me started! I dug into my
Flora of Missouri and discovered a few more:
Cotinius, the "Smoke Tree" is very closely related
Rhus aromatica: fragrant sumac [note: pink lemonade can be made from the fruit]
Rhus radicans: poison ivy
Rhus toxicodendron: poison oak
Rhus typhinia f. dissecta: Dissected Stahorn Sumac
Rhus glabra: Smooth Sumac, this is better known as Staghorn Sumac. In addition to the spice prepared from the seeds, or making a pink lemonade with the fruit, it has had other uses as well. Indians used the fruit to dye wool, they used the hollowed stems for flutes, the leaves were mixed with tobacco for smoking, and the leaves contain an abundance of tannin, and were used by country people for tanning leather.
So much for being a weed, eh?
Rhus copallina: Dwarf Sumac The fruit of this plant are not as well suited for eating as are smooth (staghorn) and fragrant sumac.
Notes from the book on the name "Sumac": "
Sumach, Shumac, Shumack, Summaque, and Shoemake - and consequent pronunciations are used for this group of plants, said to have had origin in an Arabic name for a Mediterranean species of the genus." I presume that the Mediterranean sumac has a similar taste, but a separate species name.
