Yellow Wood 



569 



obovate, thick, firm in texture, i to 2.5 cm. long, notched or rounded at the apex, 

 narrowed or wedge-shaped at the base, bluntly few-toothed or sometimes entire- 

 margined. The small yellowish green flowers are in usually numerous short axil- 

 lary cymes, and open in Florida from March to June, the slaminate on one tree, 

 the pistillate on another; there are 4 small sepals, 4 ovate petals, 4 stamens rather 

 longer than the petals in the staminate flowers, while the pistillate flowers have 2 

 pistils with slender styles united above, but no stamens. The fruit is an obovoid 

 roughish capsule about 3 mm. long, containing a round black shining seed. 



The wood of the Wild Hme is ver}- hard and compact, reddish brown, with a 

 specific gravity of about 0.74. 



The Northern prickly ash, Xanthoxylum americanum, Miller, occurring along river banks 

 and in woods from Quebec and Ontario to Georgia and from Minnesota to Nebraska and 

 Missouri, is an aromatic prickly shrub sometimes assuming the form of a tree, rarely 7 meters 

 tall, with a stem up to 2 dm. thick; it resembles the foregoing species in general appearance, 

 its flowers and fruits being in small axillary clusters, but the leaves are larger and deciduous 

 while the flowers are without calyx. This plant furnishes most of the Prickly ash berries of 

 the drug trade, but very little of the bark; its wood is coarse-grained, soft and light brown, 

 with a specific gravity is about 0.56. 



2. YELLOW WOOD Xanthoxylum flavum Vahl 



Xanthoxylum flondanum Nuttall. Fagara flava (\\^hl) Krug and Urban 

 Xanthoxylum caribaum S. Watson, not Lamarck 



The Satinwood, as it is also called, is an unarmed, evergreen, round-topped 

 tree or shrub of the Florida Keys, Bermuda and the Bahamas, southward to 

 Jamaica and Martinique. It attains a 

 maximum height of about 10 meters, 

 with a trunk up to 4.5 dm. thick, but is 

 usually much smaller. 



The bark is about 6 mm. thick, hght 

 gray, shallowly fissured, separating into 

 short, close, scales. The twigs are stout 

 but very brittle, densely silky hain,- at 

 first, gradually becoming smooth or nearly 

 so and bearing large rounded leaf scars; 

 the winter buds are about 12 mm. long, 

 taper-pointed and hair}-. The leaves are 

 unequally pinnate, i to 2 dm. long, in- 

 cluding the round stout glandular petiole; 

 the 5 to II leaflets are oblong or ovate, 

 3.5 to 7 cm. long, short-stalked, blunt or pointed at the apex, nearly entire or 

 slightly scalloped on the margin, unequal at the base; they are covered with stellate 



Fig. 524. Yellow Wood. 



