I love my Elderberries. They are edible and you can make wine, jelly, and pies. They supposedly have medicinal properties as well. Birds love the berries! I used to watch a parade of birds frequent my Elderberries until a Robin claimed the back yard as his territory. He hogs the bird bath and the Elderberries. So then I spread the shrubs farther apart thinking the Robin couldn't monopolize them. We shall see because they are still recovering from transplant. Maybe you can move the shrub in the fall if you don't want it there. They are pretty easy to move. A worthy native shrub. This post was edited by terrene on Sat, Jun 15, 13 at 21:58

I love the sumacs on my country property - note the word country. I have no problems with them growing in the roadside ditch or on the edges of the forested areas - they don't grow at all under a canopy. When they sprout up in the grassy areas abutting the woods they simply get mowed down with everything else, or pulled up if they start to encroach into the gardens. I wonder if people growing them in the city have tried just mowing - if a tree can't get nutrients via sunlight even the roots will die off eventually, I would think.

In MN , zone 4 to 4.5. Gets about -20 to -25 at worst or best, depending on your outlook. I have the volunteers: maples of diff. varieties, black walnut, sumac, dogwood, poplar, juniper, pear and apple. Probably pretty hardy since they sprouted up on their own here. But I did pull them up this summer, not dig. The hostas and lillies in pots are not much concern to me as I left many fully exposed last winter with next to no mortality. The seedlings are: in order of most concern for survival: heptacodium miconioides - seven sons flowering tree from seed - zone 5 Bristlecone pine from bare root - zone 4 Eastern white pine from bare root - zone 3 Niobe weeping willow from cuttings. -zone 3

Well, I don't know for sure what pictures 1 and 3 are, but number 2, with toothed leaves, is not poison sumac. 1 and 3 don't look like it to me, they don't have enough leaflets for one thing, but I don't know what a seedling of the species would look like. That said, poison sumac is a comparatively uncommon small tree of extremely acid and extremely alkaline swamps and fens. I can't imagine it growing in anybody's yard unless the yard has recently been carved out of very wet land.