232 PRACTICAL FOKESTRY. 



X. Amerifannni, Mill. — Xorthem Prickly Ash. — Leaves com- 

 posed of four or five pairs of leaflets, aud an odd one ; ovate- 

 oblong, downy when j-oung. Flowers minute, yellowish- 

 green, appearing with the leaves. Fruit small, in clusters, red, 

 and ripe in autumn, very pungent tasted, and often used as a 

 medicine, sometimes for tooth-ache, hence one of the common 

 names of this shrub. A lai'ge shrub, ten or more feet high, 

 with prickly branches and smooth gi'ayish bark. In rocky 

 woods, often along roadsides. Middle and Northern States. 



xiMEXiA, Plumier. — Hog Plum. 



A genus of a few species of small evergreen trees, mostly 

 tropical, with thomj^ branches, producing handsome plum-like 

 edible finiit. We have only one species. 



Xinionia Americana, Linn. — Hog-Plum, Mountain Plum. — 

 Leaves two inches long, oblong-obtuse, short petioled ; pedun- 

 cles two to four flowered. Flowers small, yellow. Fruit yel- 

 lowish, round, as large as a plum, edible. Nut round and 

 white. A small tree with yellow wood. Key "West, Florida, 

 and through the West Indies. 



ziSTPHUS, Juss. — Jiijuhe. 



A genus of some fifty species, mainly in Egypt and Southern 

 Asia. The Z. jujube is widely distributed throughout Southern 

 Europe and Northern Africa, and its dried fmit well known in 

 commerce. The species in general are spiny shrubs or small 

 trees belonging to the Rhamnacce or Buckthorn Family, and 

 often bearing edible fmit. The genus is represented Avith us by 

 two species, neither of any especial value. One in Southern 

 California, the Z. Parryi, Torrey, growing about fifteen feet 

 high, and another, the Z. ohtusifolius, Gray, in Western Texas 

 and New Mexico, is sometimes a small tree, twenty feet high, 

 but more frequently a shnib. 



