I’ve been vexed for a while by the fact that we have Tree of Heaven by our well and also wall. What is Tree of Heaven? Well, it is a Chinese sumac that is a menace although it looks perfectly beautiful and elegant just growing there all majestic. There is nothing majestic about it it though. Tree of Heaven is also called by another name…STINKING SUMAC! When I had done the research on this particular sumac, it stated that males have these little glands on the ends of the leave that put out a NASTY scent. Do you know that for a while we had no idea that the smell we kept getting a whiff of is really the tree. We thought it was our septic system. They say the tree can be compared in odor to rancid peanut butter, but since I have never smelled rancid peanut butter, I’ll have to say it smells like moldy ass wrapped up in a dirty adult diaper. LOL IT SMELLS! But it doesn’t seem to smell all the time. I pulled some of the leaves off to smell it up close and personal, and didn’t smell anything. Then all the sudden, it will stink really bad! 
You can see in the photo to the right down by my thumb the two little tiny circles on either side of the leaf. Those are the glands that let out its raunchy stench.
It upsets me very much that we will need to take this tree down. I think it is perfectly gorgeous, but near the well its not good and since it is also located near our fruit trees, it can poison the trees if the roots come close to my new baby fruit trees. It has been described as having similar properties as a walnut tree.
Anyway, it looks like we’ll be taking it down this year. I want to wait till the end of the season before we start the process of killing the tree. I just want to look at it for one more season. We’ll be stripping the bark off the base of the tree, making some deep cuts and jamming some copper into the tree. It should begin to kill the tree and roots over time without having the backlash of getting new suckers come up. If the tree wasn’t near our other trees and the septic, we’d keep it since it grows so straight and tall. We could always use the wood.
I was also hoping that it was the kind of sumac that we could make tea from. Alas…its not.
If you click on any of these photos it will take you to a full sized version of the photo. The tree is truly gorgeous.
Here are some more photos of our tree and also around the property as of this morning:
Another shot of our tree of heaven.
Zuccini
Mammoth sunflowers on the left and Jerusalem artichokes on the right.
A shot of 1/3 of our chicken pasture complete.
Our second driveway is coming along. The other day lavender and pomegranate was planted. Today more things were planted in the area. I’ll show more photos of the area tomorrow when I finish landscaping it.
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