Rhus coriariaL.

Sicilian sumac

WFO wfo-0000402784 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Rhus coriaria, photographed by Sergey Cherkasov
fig. a Sergey Cherkasov, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-05-10 / obs. 196544486
Rhus coriaria, photographed by Sergey Cherkasov
fig. b Sergey Cherkasov, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 195996186
Rhus coriaria, photographed by David Delon
fig. c David Delon, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 187344693
Rhus coriaria, photographed by София Р.
fig. d София Р., CC BY 4.0 / obs. 144064617
Rhus coriaria, photographed by Yves Bas
fig. e Yves Bas, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 159580344
Rhus coriaria, photographed by João Gonçalves
fig. f João Gonçalves, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 118034185
Rhus coriaria, photographed by Ben Costamagna
fig. g Ben Costamagna, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 99353168
Rhus coriaria, photographed by Svetlana Polevova
fig. h Svetlana Polevova, CC0 1.0 / obs. 87623926

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.

Native range 31 botanical countries

Regions where Rhus coriaria is native: Algeria, Azores, Canary Is., Madeira, Morocco, Afghanistan, Cyprus, East Aegean Is., Iran, Iraq, Lebanon-Syria, North Caucasus, Palestine, Sinai, Tadzhikistan, Transcaucasus, Türkiye, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Albania, Bulgaria, France, Greece, Italy, Kriti, Krym, NW. Balkan Pen., Portugal, Sicilia, Spain, Türkiye-in-Europe AlgeriaMoroccoAfghanistanCyprusEast Aegean Is.IranIraqLebanon-SyriaNorth CaucasusPalestineSinaiTadzhikistanTranscaucasusTürkiyeTurkmenistanUzbekistanAlbaniaBulgariaFranceGreeceItalyKritiKrymNW. Balkan Pen.PortugalSiciliaSpainTürkiye-in-Europe AzoresCanary Is.Madeira
Native distribution of Rhus coriaria, after Kew’s World Checklist of Vascular Plants. Introduced, extinct and doubtful records are excluded, so this is where the plant is from, not everywhere it now grows. Regions too small to draw at this scale are marked with a dot.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Afghanistan AFG ASIA-TEMPERATE
Cyprus CYP
East Aegean Is. EAI
Iran IRN
Iraq IRQ
Lebanon-Syria LBS
North Caucasus NCS
Palestine PAL
Sinai SIN
Tadzhikistan TZK
Transcaucasus TCS
Türkiye TUR
Turkmenistan TKM
Uzbekistan UZB
Albania ALB EUROPE
Bulgaria BUL
France FRA
Greece GRC
Italy ITA
Kriti KRI
Krym KRY
NW. Balkan Pen. YUG
Portugal POR
Sicilia SIC
Spain SPA
Türkiye-in-Europe TUE
Algeria ALG AFRICA
Azores AZO
Canary Is. CNY
Madeira MDR
Morocco MOR

Region boundaries approximated from Natural Earth (public domain) and mapped to TDWG World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions (WGSRPD) level-3 botanical countries (Brummitt 2001). Indicative, not the official WGSRPD geometry.

Flowering 39 in flower of 172 examined

Peak flowering in May. Each bar is the share of Rhus coriaria observations in which someone actually recorded the reproductive state and found the plant in flower, not the raw number of flowering records. That distinction matters: people observe plants far more in spring than in winter, so a bare count of flowering records partly measures when people go outside. Dividing by the number examined removes that. 39 of 172 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. One month has fewer than 5 examined observations, so no proportion is drawn for it. This is still a global aggregate and not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres. Where a species has fewer than 30 flowering records we do not draw this chart at all. Computed from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Where it actually grows measured, from 1,605 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -3.2 °C 0.8 °C 10.0 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 23.4 °C 26.7 °C 32.0 °C
Annual rainfall 499 mm 773 mm 1,730 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 5 mm 104 mm 192 mm

It is found where winters bring light frost. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 1,605 research-grade observations of Rhus coriaria that carry a coordinate, and this is the range those places actually span. The 5th and 95th percentiles are used rather than the minimum and maximum, because a single cultivated specimen in a heated conservatory should not widen a tropical plant's range to the Arctic.

This is not a hardiness zone. A USDA zone is the average annual extreme minimum temperature. The figure above is the mean daily minimum of the coldest month, which is a different quantity and is typically far warmer. Reading one as the other would place a plant several zones too warm, so we do not publish a hardiness zone, because we do not have one. Climate from CHELSA V2.1 (Karger et al. 2017); occurrences from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Also published as 6 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 amoena Salisb.
  • Rhus coriaria var. zebaria Shahbaz
  • Rhus heterophylla C.C.Gmel.
  • Rhus sumac O.Targ.Tozz.
  • Rhus variifolia DC.
  • Toxicodendron coriaria (L.) Kuntze

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.
  3. Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
  4. Kew, World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP v16). native distribution by TDWG level-3 botanical country, and life form. CC BY 3.0. Retrieved 2026-06-04.

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