ARALIACESE. 
SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 59 
ARALIA SPINOSA. 
Hercules’ Club. 
FLowers perfect or polygamo-monecious, in large compound racemose panicles. 
Leaves ample, twice pinnate. 
Aralia spinosa, Linneus, Spec. 273 (1753). — Fabricius, 
Enum. Pl. Helm. ed. 2, 405. — Crantz, Umbell. 123. — 
Miller, Dict. ed. 8, No. 3.— Du Roi, Harbk. Bawmz. i. 
63.— Lamarck, Dict. i. 223. — Marshall, Arbust. 4. 
11. — Walter, Fl. Car. 117. — Schmidt, Oestr. Baume. ii. 
52, t. 102, 103. — Willdenow, Berl. Baumz. 23 ; Spec. i. pt. 
ii. 1520; Hnum. 332. — Michaux, FU. Bor.-Am. i. 186. — 
Persoon, Syn. i. 332.— Pursh, Fl. Am. Sept. i. 209. — 
Roemer & Schultes, Syst. vi. 701. — Elliott, Sk. i. 372. — 
Sprengel, Syst. i. 951. — De Candolle, Prodr. iv. 259. — 
Don, Gen. Syst. iii. 389. — Spach, Hist. Vég. viii. 120. — 
? Cheerophyllum 
Torrey & Gray, 77. N. Am. i. 647.— Dietrich, Syn. ii. 
1035. — Curtis, Rep. Geology. Surv. N. Car. iii. 91. — 
Chapman, F7. 166. — Seemann, Jour. Bot. vi. 135. — 
Koch, Dendr. i. 672. — Lauche, Deutsche Dendr. ed. 2, 
503.— Watson & Coulter, Gray’s Mun. ed. 6, 2138. 
arborescens, Linneus, Spec. 259 
(1753). — Hill, Vey. Syst. vi. 55, t. 53, £ 3.— Crantz, 
Umbell. 79. — Lamarck, Dict. i. 684. — Willdenow, Spec. 
i. pt. ii. 1457. — Persoon, Syn. i. 321. — Don, Gen. Syst. 
iii. 367. — Torrey & Gray, Fl. N. Am. i. 638. — Dietrich, 
Syn. ii. 983. 
A spiny tree, thirty to thirty-five feet in height, with a trunk six to eight inches in diameter and 
stout wide-spreading branches ; or more often a shrub with a cluster of unbranched stems six to twenty 
feet tall. The bark of the trunk is dark brown, an eighth of an inch thick, and divided by wide shallow 
fissures into broad rounded ridges irregularly broken on the surface. The branchlets are one half to 
two thirds of an inch in diameter, armed like the principal branches and young trunks with stout and 
straight or slightly incurved orange-colored scattered prickles, and nearly encircled by the conspicuous 
narrow leaf-scars which are marked by a row of prominent fibro-vascular bundle-scars; the inner bark 
is bright green and the outer is thin, light orange-colored in the first season, lustrous and marked 
uregularly with oblong pale dots, and in the second year light brown. The terminal bud is conical, 
blunt at the apex, one half to three quarters of an inch long, and covered with thin chestnut-brown 
scales. The axillary buds are triangular, flattened, and about a quarter of an inch in length and 
breadth. The leaves, which are clustered at the top of the branches, are twice pinnate, three or four 
feet long, two and a half feet broad, with stout light brown petioles eighteen to twenty inches in length 
clasping the stem with enlarged bases, and armed with slender prickles, or occasionally unarmed ;1 the 
pinne are unequally pinnate, usually with five or six pairs of leaflets and a long-stalked terminal leaflet, 
and are often furnished at the base with a pinnate or simple leaflet; the ultimate divisions of the leaves 
are ovate-acute, dentate or crenate, wedge-shaped or more or less rounded at the base and short-stalked, 
with prominent midribs and reticulated vemlets; when they unfold they are lustrous, bronze green, 
and slightly pilose on the upper side of the midribs and on the midribs and primary veins below, and at 
maturity are membranaceous, dark green on the upper surface, pale on the lower, two to three inches 
in length, an inch and a half in breadth, and occasionally furnished with small hooked prickles on the 
The acute stipules are half an inch long, and when the leaves unfold are 
puberulous on the back and ciliate on the margins. In the autumn the leaves turn light yellow before 
falling. The flowers, which appear in midsummer, are produced on long slender pubescent straw- 
colored pedicels in many-flowered umbels arranged in compound panicles, with light brown puberulous 
branches forming a terminal racemose cluster three or four feet in length which rises, solitary or two or 
three together, above the spreading leaves. The bracts and bractlets are lanceolate, acute, scarious, 
upper side of the midribs. 
1 tralia spinosa, 8., Torrey & Gray, F7. N. Am. i. 647 (1840). 
