FUSTIC, or Yellow Wood, also known as old fustic (Germ. Gelbholz, Fr. Bois jaune), is a dye-stuff consisting of the wood of Madura tinctoria, Don, a large tree of the natural order Moraceae, growing in the West Indies and tropical America, and having oblong, taper-pointed leaves, and an edible fruit. Fustic occurs in commerce in blocks, which are brown without, and of a brownish-yellow within. It is sometimes employed for inlaid work For its use in the dyeing of yellow and other colours, see vol. vii. pp. 578, 579. The dye-stuff termed young fustic or Zante fustic, and also Venetian sumach, is the wood oí {Rhus Cotinus, Linn., a southern European and Asiatic shrub of the natural order Anacardiaceae, called by Gerarde “red sumach,” and apparently the “coccygia” and “cotinus” of Pliny (Nat. Hist., χiii. 41, xvi. 30). Its leaves are deciduous, stiff, smooth, obovate, simple, and rounded at the apex, with long petioles; the blossoms are small, pale-purplish or flesh-coloured, and in loose panicles, and their pedicels, after the flowering is over, become long and hairy, forming together, as Gerarde remarks, “a most fine woollie or stockie tuft, crisped and curled like a curious wrought silken fleece” (The HerbaH, p. 1293, 1597). The plant in its native habitats is used both for dyeing and tanning, and by Loudon (Arboretum, vol. ii. p. 550) it is recommended for ornamental purposes.