582 TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 



stamens 4, with slender exserted filaments, in the fertile flower; pistils 2, with ovate 

 sessile ovaries, gradually contracted into long slender subulate exserted styles united 

 near the apex and crowned with obliquely spreading stigmas, rudimentary in the 



staminate flower. Fruit ripening in September, obovate, rusty brown and rugose, 

 ^'-^ long; seed solitary, dark and lustrous. 



A tree, occasionally 2o-30 high, with a slender often inclining trunk, fastigiate 

 branches, and more or less zigzag slender dark gray branchlets armed with sharp 

 hooked stipidar spines; more frequently a tall or low shrub. Bark of the trunk about 

 y thick, the smooth light gray surface broken into small appressed persistent scales. 

 Wood heavy, hard, very close-grained, brown tinged with red, with thin yellow sap- 

 wood of 10-12 layers of annual growth. 



Distribution. Coast and islands of southern Florida, and Texas from Matagorda 

 Bay to the Rio Grande; one of the commonest of the south Florida plants and 

 arborescent on the rich hummock soil of Elliott's Key and the shores of Bay Biscayne; 

 in Texas generally shrubby; common in northern Mexico, and widely distributed 

 through the Antilles, southern Mexico, and Central and South America to Brazil and 

 Peru. 



2. Fagara Clava-Herculis, Small. Prickly Ash. Toothache-tree. 



{Xanthoxylum Clava-Herculis, Silva N. Am. i. 67.) 



Leaves 5'-8' long, with stout pubescent or glabrous spiny petioles, and 3-9 pairs 

 of ovate or ovate-lanceolate sometimes slightly falcate subcoriaceous leaflets usually 

 oblique at the base, crenulate-serrate, sessile or short-stalked, l'-2^' long, green and 

 lustrous above, paler and often somewhat pubescent below, especially when they 

 unfold, persistent until late in the winter or until the appearance of the new leaves 

 in early spring. Flo"wers on slender pedicels ^'-j' long, from the axils of minute 

 lanceolate deciduous bracts, in ample wide-branched cymes 4'-5' long and 2'-3' 

 broad, appearing when the leaves are about half grown, the staminate and pistillate 

 on different individuals; sepals minute, membranaceous, persistent, barely one fourth 

 the length of the oval green petals ^'-\' long; stamens 5, with slender filiform fila- 

 ments, conspicuously exserted from the male flowers, rudimentary or wanting in the 

 female flowers ; pistils 3, rarely 2, with sessile ovaries and short styles crowned by a 

 slightly 2-lobed stigma. Fruit ripening in August and September, in dense often 



