568 



The Prickly Ashes 



I. THE PRICKLY ASHES 



GENUS XANTHOXYLUM LINN^US 



ANTHOXYLUM (Greek, Yellow wood) includes not fewer than 

 140 species, all woody plants and many of them trees, widely dis- 

 tributed in tropical regions, a few in the temperate zones; the type is 

 Xanthoxylum Clava-H erculis Linnaeus. Their foliage is aromatic and 

 the bark is usually armed with spines supported on conic cushions of cork. The 

 leaves are alternate and pinnately compound in all our species. The flower-clus- 

 ters are either terminal or axillary and the flowers perfect or usually imperfect; 

 they have 4 or 5 sepals, petals and stamens, and the pistil is composed of from i to 

 4 carpels, more or less united, which ripen into capsules each containing one seed. 



Flower-clusters small, dense, axillary. 

 Flower-clusters large, terminal. 

 Leaves unequally pinnate, dull. 

 Not prickly; leaves persistent. 

 Very prickly; leaves deciduous. 

 Leaves equally pinnate, shining. 



I. X. Fa gar a. 



2. X. flavum. 



3. X. Clava-H erculis. 



4. X. coriaceum. 



I. WILD LIME Xanthoxylum Fagara 



(Linnaeus) Sargent 



Schiniis Fagara Linnaeus. Fagara Fagara 

 Small 



Usually a shrub, the Wild lime, occa- 

 sionally forms a tree about 10 meters high. 

 It grows plentifully in southern Florida, 

 along the Gulf coast in Texas, is very 

 abundant throughout the Bahamas and oc- 

 curs also through the West Indies to Cen- 

 tral and South America, being one of the 

 most widely distributed of tropical woody 

 plants. 



The bark is gray and thin and bears 

 corky projections 2.5 cm. high or less; the 

 branches are usually plentifully armed with 

 hooked prickles, making passage through 

 thickets usually impossible without cutting one's way, though the plant is occa- 

 sionally nearly or quite unarmed; the twigs are smooth, gray-brown, often some- 

 what zigzag. The evergreen leaves are unequally pinnate, 6 to 10 cm. long, with 

 from 5 to II sessile leaflets, the axis winged between the leaflets, and the leaf- 

 stalk, which is from 6 to 12 mm. long, also winged or margined; the leafllets are 



Fig. 523. Wild Lime. 



