Toxicodendron succedaneum
Poisonous plant
Environmental Weed (2024)
Common names
Japanese wax-tree
Biostatus
Exotic
Category
Vascular
Structural class
Trees & Shrubs - Dicotyledons
Simplified description
A large shrub or tree, up to 8 m tall with minute yellowish-green flowers and pale shiny brown fruit.
Flower colours
Green, Yellow
Detailed description
Dioecious, deciduous, sometimes suckering small tree, up to 8 m tall. Sap poisonous. Leaves alternate, imparipinnate, glabrous, 200-400 mm long (longest at the sapling stage), with 4-6(-7) paired leaflets, and usually 1 terminal leaflet. Leaflets recurved to drooping, 60-80 × 15-25(-30) mm, narrow-ovate to lanceolate, base oblique, apex long-acuminate, dark green to grey green (often suffused with red) above, often glaucous beneath; seedling leaflets strongly toothed, adults entire. Petiole, rachis, veins and undersides of leaves often pink. Inflorescence an axillary panicle, 100-200 mm long; flowers minute, yellowish-green,5-6 mm diam., sepals 5, petals 5, anthers 5. Fruit a fleshy drupe, 7-10 mm diam., globose-ovoid, flattened, smooth, pale shiny brown.
Similar taxa
Similar to sumac trees.
Distribution
A native of Asia, although it has been planted elsewhere, most notably Australia and New Zealand.
Habitat
Coastal indigenous vegetation, urban gardens, and wasteland
Conservation status
Not applicable
Detailed taxonomy
Family
Synonyms
Rhus succedanea
Ecology
Year naturalised
1984
Origin
Himalaya to Japan
Reason for introduction
Ornamental
Tolerances
Cold tolerant.
Life cycle and dispersal
Long lived small tree, which repiroduces by seed.(a single seed held within a fleshy drupe). The species is bird dispersed and by gravity.
Other information
Poisonous plant
All members of the genus produce the skin-irritating oil urushiol, which can cause a severe allergic reaction. This is called urushiol-induced contact dermatitis (also called Toxicodendron dermatitis and Rhus dermatitis). In most cases rash symptoms appear within 24 hours. If a severe reaction occurs medical attention is needed to prevent damage to the skin. The rash may persist for up to one or two weeks (in some cases up to five weeks). One in four people are likely to experience severe symptoms. Since the skin reaction is an allergic one, people may develop progressively stronger reactions after repeated exposures. Click on this link for more ionformation about poisonous garden plants.
Environmental Weed (2024)
This plant is named in a list of 386 environmental weeds in New Zealand 2024 prepared by DOC. 759 candidate species were considered for inclusion on this new comprehensive list of environmental weeds in New Zealand. The species considered were drawn from published lists of weed species, lists of plants that must be reported or managed by law if observed, existing national and regional programmes and agreements for pest management, and species already managed by the Department of Conservation (DOC). Candidate species were then assessed to see if they were fully naturalised and whether they have more than minor impacts in natural ecosystems. Read the full report here.
NVS code
The National Vegetation Survey (NVS) Databank is a physical archive and electronic databank containing records of over 94,000 vegetation survey plots - including data from over 19,000 permanent plots. NVS maintains a standard set of species code abbreviations that correspond to standard scientific plant names from the Ngä Tipu o Aotearoa - New Zealand Plants database.
TOXSUC