Where Does Sumac Grow? From the Mediterranean to North America

Sumac grows natively across a remarkably wide belt of the Northern Hemisphere, from the rocky hillsides of Turkey, Lebanon, and Iran through southern Europe and into large stretches of North America, from southern Canada down to Mexico and Central America. The genus Rhus contains roughly 250 species distributed across subtropical and temperate regions worldwide, with a deep evolutionary history stretching back nearly 50 million years.¹ That breadth makes “where does sumac grow” a more interesting question than it first appears, because the answer depends on which sumac you mean and what you want to do with it.

The Mediterranean and Western Asian Heartland

When cooks and spice merchants talk about sumac, they almost always mean Rhus coriaria, sometimes called tanner’s sumac or Syrian sumac. This is the species whose dried, ground berries show up as a deep-red seasoning across Middle Eastern, Turkish, and Iranian cuisines. Its native range stretches across the Mediterranean basin and into western Asia, thriving in the drier, warmer climates of countries like Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Palestine, Iran, and Turkey.¹ It also grows in parts of southern Europe, including Italy, Greece, and the Canary Islands, and extends eastward into the Caucasus.

Turkey is one of the most significant countries for Rhus coriaria, both in wild populations and in small-scale cultivation. Climate-suitability modeling has found that about 215,000 square kilometers of Turkey, roughly a third of the country, is climatically suited to the species under current conditions.² The plant grows in orchards in some Lebanese and Turkish rural areas but is just as often found wild on hillsides, roadsides, and the edges of forests, where it does well in poor, rocky soil and full sun. In many places it has been harvested from wild stands for centuries rather than deliberately farmed.

North American Sumac Species

North America is home to its own rich assortment of sumac species, most of them in the subgenus Lobadium. The best known are staghorn sumac (Rhus typhina), smooth sumac (Rhus glabra), and fragrant sumac (Rhus aromatica). Staghorn sumac, named for the velvety fuzz on its branches that resembles deer antler velvet, ranges from southeastern Canada through the northeastern and midwestern United States. Smooth sumac has one of the widest distributions of any North American shrub, found in all 48 contiguous U.S. states, parts of Canada, and into northern Mexico. Fragrant sumac prefers drier ground and is common from the Great Plains eastward.

These North American species are not the ones sold as a culinary spice in Middle Eastern grocery stores, but they are edible. Indigenous peoples across North America have long used staghorn and smooth sumac berries to make a tart, lemonade-like drink by soaking the berry clusters in cold water. The flavor is milder and less complex than that of Rhus coriaria, but the family resemblance in tartness is unmistakable. Shining sumac (Rhus copallinum) and littleleaf sumac (Rhus microphylla) add to the continent’s diversity, each occupying different ecological niches from the southeastern coastal plain to the arid Southwest.

It is worth noting that the genus Rhus was historically defined more broadly and included poison sumac (Toxicodendron vernix), poison ivy, and poison oak. Modern taxonomy has separated those plants into their own genus, Toxicodendron. Poison sumac prefers boggy wetlands, not the dry hillsides where true sumacs thrive, and its berries are white rather than red. If you encounter a shrub with drooping clusters of white berries in a swampy area, that is not a plant you want to touch.

An Ancient Genus That Crossed Continents

The geographic split between Mediterranean and North American sumacs is not a coincidence of human introduction. It reflects tens of millions of years of continental drift, migration, and speciation. Fossil evidence places the genus Rhus as far back as the early Eocene, and molecular clock estimates peg its divergence from its closest relatives at about 49 million years ago.³

Phylogenetic analysis suggests that Rhus originated in North America and then migrated into Asia via the Bering Land Bridge during the late Eocene, roughly 34 million years ago, when the climate was warm enough to support temperate forests at high latitudes.³ Once in Asia, the lineage continued to diversify. The culinary sumac Rhus coriaria, native to southern Europe and western Asia, split from its eastern Asian relatives about 24 million years ago. Meanwhile, the Hawaiian species Rhus sandwicensis diverged from the Asian Rhus chinensis around 13.5 million years ago, presumably through long-distance dispersal across the Pacific.³

Back in North America, the subgenus Lobadium radiated into the many species found there today and eventually migrated southward into Central America. So the story of sumac is really the story of a plant lineage that took the long way around the Northern Hemisphere, splitting and adapting as continents shifted and climates changed. The Mediterranean and North American populations are distant cousins, not recent transplants.

What Climate and Terrain Sumac Prefers

Across its many species, sumac has a general personality: it likes sun, tolerates drought, and does not mind poor soil. In the Mediterranean, Rhus coriaria thrives on limestone slopes, abandoned agricultural terraces, and open woodlands where it gets plenty of light. The environmental variables that best predict its range in Turkey include annual mean temperature, temperature seasonality, precipitation seasonality, and terrain roughness.² In practical terms, it wants warm summers, can handle cool winters as long as they are not extreme, and is flexible about rainfall as long as the soil drains well.

North American species follow a similar pattern. Staghorn sumac colonizes roadside banks, clearings, and forest edges throughout the northeastern United States. Smooth sumac pushes into even drier conditions, showing up on prairies, rocky outcrops, and highway medians across the continent. Littleleaf sumac occupies the arid borderlands of Texas, New Mexico, and northern Mexico.

One trait that unites many sumac species is their role as early colonizers. When a patch of forest is cleared by logging, fire, or agriculture and then abandoned, sumac is often among the first woody plants to move in. It spreads aggressively by root suckers, sending up new shoots from lateral roots to form dense, clonal thickets. This makes it an excellent stabilizer of disturbed or eroding ground but also means it can be an aggressive competitor in gardens and managed landscapes. If you plant a staghorn sumac in your yard, expect it to try to take over the flower bed within a few years.

Climate Change and the Shifting Range of Rhus coriaria

Because Rhus coriaria is tied to specific temperature and precipitation patterns, climate change poses real questions about its future range. The modeling study that mapped the species’ current habitat suitability across Turkey found that about a third of the country is currently climatically suitable.² Under warming scenarios, that suitable area is projected to shift, with some low-elevation zones in southern Turkey becoming too hot and dry while higher-elevation or more northern areas may become newly suitable.

This pattern matters beyond Turkey. Across the broader Mediterranean, rising temperatures and more erratic rainfall could push Rhus coriaria’s optimal habitat northward or to higher elevations. For communities in Lebanon, Iran, and southern Turkey that have relied on wild-harvested sumac for generations, that kind of range shift could affect supply and livelihoods. It may also open opportunities for cultivation in areas that were previously too cool, such as parts of the Balkans or the northern Mediterranean coast, though the plant’s adaptation to specific soil types would also need to align.

North American sumacs are generally more cold-hardy and occupy a broader climatic envelope, so the immediate threat looks different. Smooth sumac already spans an enormous range of climates. But species with narrower distributions, especially those in the arid Southwest, could face stress from intensifying drought.

Culinary Sumac and Its Distinctive Flavor

The reason most people outside the Middle East first hear about sumac is its use as a spice. Rhus coriaria berries are harvested when ripe, dried, and ground into a coarse, brick-red powder. The flavor is tangy, fruity, and slightly astringent, sometimes described as a less harsh alternative to lemon juice. It is sprinkled over fattoush salads, mixed into za’atar spice blends with thyme and sesame seeds, rubbed onto grilled meats, and stirred into dips.

That tartness comes mainly from malic and citric acids in the fruit, the same acids that make green apples and citrus fruit sour. But sumac’s flavor is more complex than simple sourness. Volatile compounds including beta-caryophyllene and caryophyllene oxide contribute spicy and woody aromatic notes.⁴ Meanwhile, the high concentration of tannins and phenolic compounds creates a drying, astringent sensation on the palate, similar to what you feel with strong black tea or unripe persimmon.⁵ The interplay between acidity, astringency, and those warm aromatic notes is what makes sumac hard to substitute with any single ingredient.

Gallic acid is the most abundant phenolic compound in sumac fruit, followed by hydrolysable tannins that can make up roughly a fifth of the fruit’s dry mass.¹ Those tannins are also the reason Rhus coriaria earned the name “tanner’s sumac.” For centuries, the plant was a major source of tanning agents used to process leather in the Mediterranean region, a use that has declined with modern chemistry but has not disappeared entirely.

Sumac Beyond the Kitchen

The same phenolic compounds that give sumac its flavor have attracted interest from medical researchers. Sumac extracts have shown strong antioxidant activity in laboratory settings, which is not surprising given their phenolic density. More intriguing is the antimicrobial work. One study tested aqueous sumac extract against methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), a notoriously difficult-to-treat bacterium, and found that the extract inhibited bacterial growth, prevented biofilm formation at concentrations above the minimum inhibitory level, and reduced signs of infection in mice.⁶

That is promising but early-stage. The jump from “works against bacteria in a lab dish and in mice” to “viable treatment for human infections” is enormous, and most compounds that look good in vitro never make it through clinical trials. Still, in a world struggling with antibiotic resistance, researchers are systematically screening traditional plant medicines for leads, and sumac’s long history of folk use for sore throats, digestive troubles, and wound care makes it a reasonable candidate to investigate.

Traditional uses of sumac have varied by region. In parts of the Middle East, sumac infusions have been used as a remedy for upset stomachs and as a gargle for mouth sores. In North America, some Indigenous groups used smooth sumac bark and berries for similar purposes, as well as for treating fevers. These folk traditions do not prove effectiveness on their own, but they point researchers toward compounds worth studying with modern methods.

Telling Sumac Species Apart

If you are foraging or just curious about a shrub you spotted on a hike, a few features help you distinguish the main sumac species from one another and from plants you should avoid.

Staghorn sumac: Large, compound leaves with serrated leaflets, fuzzy reddish stems, and upright, cone-shaped clusters of dark-red, hairy berries. Common in the northeastern United States and southeastern Canada.
Smooth sumac: Similar to staghorn but with smooth, hairless stems and a somewhat smaller growth habit. Extremely widespread across North America.
Fragrant sumac: Smaller, three-lobed leaves with a citrusy scent when crushed. Lower-growing, often found on dry slopes and bluffs.
Rhus coriaria: Compound leaves with rounded, toothed leaflets and dense clusters of small dark-red fruits. Native to the Mediterranean and western Asia.
Poison sumac: Belongs to the separate genus Toxicodendron. Prefers swamps and wet soils, has smooth-edged leaflets, and produces drooping clusters of white or pale-yellow berries. Contact with its sap causes a severe rash similar to poison ivy.

The simplest rule of thumb in North America: red berry clusters that point upward belong to harmless true sumacs; white or pale berry clusters that droop downward belong to poison sumac. The habitats rarely overlap, since true sumacs favor dry, sunny ground while poison sumac lives in wetlands, but knowing the visual difference prevents any confusion.

Growing Sumac in Your Own Landscape

Ornamental and culinary interest in sumac has grown in recent years, particularly as gardeners look for drought-tolerant, low-maintenance native plants. In North America, staghorn and smooth sumac are readily available from native-plant nurseries and require almost no care once established. They prefer full sun and well-drained soil but tolerate clay, sand, and rocky ground. Their brilliant red and orange fall foliage rivals any ornamental maple, and the persistent berry clusters provide winter food for birds.

The main drawback is suckering. A single sumac can send up shoots several meters from the parent plant, forming a dense colony. This is a virtue if you want a fast-growing screen or erosion control on a slope, but a headache if you want a tidy garden border. Installing a root barrier or planting in an area bordered by pavement or mowing can help contain the spread.

Growing Rhus coriaria outside its native range is trickier. It needs warm, dry summers and mild winters, roughly matching USDA hardiness zones 8 through 10. Gardeners in Mediterranean-climate parts of California, parts of the Pacific Northwest, or the southern United States may have success, but the plant is not widely sold outside specialty nurseries. In cooler or wetter climates, the berries may not develop their full flavor, and the plant may struggle with root rot in poorly drained soil. For most cooks outside the Mediterranean, buying dried sumac from a spice merchant remains the practical route to getting the flavor into your kitchen.

Sumac in Ecological Restoration

Land managers and restoration ecologists have increasingly turned to native sumac species as tools for reclaiming degraded sites. Because smooth and staghorn sumac tolerate poor, compacted, or eroded soils and spread quickly via root suckers, they are useful for stabilizing slopes after road construction, mining, or wildfire. Their dense thickets provide cover for ground-nesting birds and small mammals, and the berry clusters feed dozens of bird species through winter when other food is scarce.

Sumac also plays a role in forest succession. On abandoned farmland or cleared forest in the eastern United States, sumac thickets often represent an early successional stage that gives way over decades to taller hardwoods as the canopy closes. In that transitional period, the sumac colony acts as a nursery of sorts, shading out aggressive grasses and creating conditions under which tree seedlings can establish. From an ecological perspective, sumac is not a climax species that defines a mature forest. It is a builder, holding soil and creating structure while the slower-growing trees catch up. That humble but critical role is one reason ecologists value it even as some landowners view it as a weed.

1
Heliyon. A comprehensive review on Syrian sumac (Rhus coriaria L.)
2
Scientific Reports. The future of tanner’s sumac (Rhus coriaria) in a warming world
3
PubMed. Phylogenetic and biogeographic diversification of Rhus (Anacardiaceae) in the Northern Hemisphere
4
International Journal of Gastronomy and Food Science. Sumac (Rhus coriaria): The magical spice
5
PubMed Central. Rhus coriaria L. (Sumac), a Versatile and Resourceful Food Spice with Cornucopia of Polyphenols
6
PubMed Central. Antibacterial and antioxidant properties of sumac extract on methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus