Care should be taken to avoid contact with poison sumac, which can be more toxic than either poison oak or poison ivy. Never burn poison sumac, as inhaling the smoke can cause life-threatening pulmonary edema.

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Poison Sumac is usually a shrub about 10 to 15 feet high, but is know to get up to 30 feet high as a multi-stem tree. Its compound leaves are 7 to 15 inches long with 7 to 13 leaflets, each about 3 to 4 inches long and without margin teeth and they turn bright red or purple in the fall. It produces clusters of greenish-yellow flowers that bear ivory-white rounded drupes about 1/3rd of an inch in diameter on the female plants. The bark of the stems is thin, smooth, and gray-brown. As the name implies, this plant does contain the toxic oil that causes bad rashes. Its native range is from along the Gulf of Mexico from east Texas to central Florida, up to southern Maine, over the southeast tip of Ontario, through Ohio, north & central Indiana & Illinois, lower Michigan, all Wisconsin, into a little of eastern Minnesota growing in swamps, bogs, and in areas of wet, clay soils, usually acid. Poison Sumac is not a common plant and not just everywhere in its range. Many people don't know nor have seen this shrub and get it mixed up in their minds with the two vine species of Poison-Ivy and Poison-Oak that are much more common. Like true Sumacs, this is not a true sumac species having very different fruit, it is a member of the Cashew Family (Anacardiaceae), as are the two vine species.

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The book "How to Know the Wildflowers" (1922) by Mrs. William Starr Dana gives us some useful information on how to tell the difference between the poison variety and the more "innocent" sumacs. The poison variety can be distinguished by the "slender flower clusters which grow from the axils of the leaves, those of the innocent sumacs being borne in pyramidal, terminal clusters." Later in the year, you can tell the difference by the color of the fruit. The poison sumac has white or dun-colored fruits, while the other is crimson.

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