RUTACE^E 635 



spines; more frequently a tall or low shrub. Bark of the trunk about f ' 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 sapwood of 10-12 layers of annual 

 growth. 



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

 to the Rio Grande and in San Saba, Bandera, and Brown Counties; 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. Xanthoxylum clava-Herculis L. Prickly Ash. Toothache-tree. 



Fagara clava-Herculis Small. 



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

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

 at 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 



Fig. 578 



late in the winter or until the appearance of the new leaves in the early spring. Flowers on 

 slender pedicels |'-|' long, from the axils of minute lanceolate deciduous bracts, in ample 

 wide-branched cymes 4 '-5' long and 2'-3' wide, appearing hi very early spring, when the 

 leaves are about half grown, the staminate and pistillate flowers on different individuals; 

 sepals minute, membranaceeus, persistent, barely one fourth the length of the oval green 

 petals \'-\' long; stamens 5, with slender filiform filaments, conspicuously exserted from 

 the male flowers, rudimentary or wanting in the female flowers; pistils 3, rarely 2, with ses- 

 sile ovaries and short styles crowned by a slightly 2-lobed stigma. Fruit ripening in May 

 and June, in dense often nearly globose clusters; mature carpels obliquely ovoid, 1-seeded, 

 chestnut-brown, f ' long, with a rugose or pitted surface; seeds hanging at maturity outside 

 the carpels. 



A round-headed tree, 25-30, or exceptionally 50 high, with a short trunk 12'-18' in 

 diameter, numerous branches spreading nearly at right angles, and stout branchlets cov- 

 ered when they first appear with brown pubescence, becoming glabrous and light gray in 

 their second year, and marked by small glandular spots and by large elevated obcordate 

 leaf-scars displaying a row of large fibro- vascular bundle-scars, and armed with stout 

 straight or sometimes slightly curved sharp chestnut-brown spines \' or more long, with a 



