What is this?

Near the beginning of my favorite walk lives a copse of the most beautiful beings. Skinny, of medium height, clad in nondescript foliage, they're unremarkable for most of the year.

But that's not what I see today. In winter these bushes shed their boring clothes and turn into alien creatures. I’m walking through a cityscape of organic skyscrapers, scarlet cone penthouses at the gangly top of each one. I take their picture.

This is a community of Staghorn Sumac, their name perfectly describing the crowd of bare and roughly-sketched branches I'm looking at.  During winter the landscape might as well be a silhouette drawing of a field of antlers. The name pays homage to the deer that often loiter here having lunch.

So as I write about the village of plants I so love to walk through, I'll also tip my hat…or nod my antlers…to whatever ingenuity produced such a perfect name.