the.com/smoke tree
a shrub that fakes wildfire smoke with thousands of feathery dead flower stalks.
means A shrub or small tree (genus Cotinus, or the desert Psorothamnus) whose airy, plume-like flower clusters give the whole plant a hazy, smoky appearance from a distance.
from A plain descriptive English name, the kind gardeners and frontier travelers reach for: the plant looks wreathed in smoke, so it became the "smoke tree." The Eurasian Cotinus carries the genus name from Greek "kotinos," originally the wild olive, while the American desert smoke tree (Psorothamnus) earned the same nickname independently for its pale, hazy, leafless look across dry washes — two unrelated plants converging on one vivid image.
- smoke trick
- hairy spent flower stems create the smoky haze, not blooms
- genus name
- Cotinus comes from Greek for wild olive
- dye legacy
- its wood yields a yellow-orange dye called young fustic
- fall fire
- leaves blaze orange, red and purple in autumn
- toxic kin
- related to cashews, mangoes and poison ivy
cotinus coggygria — mediterranean ornamental shrub producing feathery pink-gray inflorescences that resemble smoke
cotinus obovatus — north american species native to oklahoma and texas, produces similar smoky plumes in summer