778 TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 



one arborescent species in the flora of the United States. Hedera, the Ivy, of this family, 

 is commonly cultivated in the temperate parts of the United States, and some species of 

 Panax and Acanthopanax from eastern Asia are found in gardens in the northeastern states. 



1. ARALIA L. 



Aromatic spiny trees and shrubs, with stout pithy branchlets, and thick fleshy roots, or 

 bristly or glabrous perennial herbs. Leaves digitate or once or twice pinnate, the pinnre 

 serrulate; stipules produced on the expanded and clasping base of the petiole. Flowers 

 perfect, polygamo-monoecious or polygamo-dioecious, on slender jointed pedicels, small, 

 greenish white; calyx-tube coherent with the ovary, the limb truncate, repand or minutely 

 toothed, the teeth valvate in the bud; petals imbricated in the bud, inserted by their broad 

 base on the margin of the disk, ovate, obtuse or acute and slightly inflexed at apex; stamens 

 inserted on the margin of the disk, alternate with the petals; filaments filiform; anthers ob- 

 long or rarely ovoid, attached on the back, introrse, 2-celled, the cells opening longitudi- 

 nally; ovary 2-5-celled; styles 2-5, in the fertile flower distinct and erect or slightly united 

 at base, spreading and incurved above the middle, or incurved from the base and some- 

 times inflexed at apex, crowned with large capitate stigmas, in the sterile flower short and 

 united. Fruit fleshy, laterally compressed or 3-5-angled, crowned with the remnants of 

 the style; nutlets 2-5, orbicular, ovoid or oblong, compressed, crustaceous, light reddish 

 brown, 1-seeded. Seed compressed; seed-coat thin, light brown, adnate to the thin fleshx 

 albumen; cotyledons ovate-oblong, as long as the straight radicle. 



Aralia with forty species is confined to North America and Asia. 



The name is of obscure meaning. 



1 . Aralia spinosa L. Hercules' Club. 



Leaves clustered at the end of the branches, twice pinnate, 3-4 long and 2^ wide, 

 with a stout light brown petiole 18'-20' in length, clasping the stem with an enlarged base 

 and armed with slender prickles, or occasionally unarmed ; pinna3 unequally pinnate, usually 

 with 5 or 6 pairs of lateral leaflets and a long-stalked terminal leaflet, and often furnished 

 at base with a pinnate or simple leaflet; leaflets ovate, acute, dentate or crenate, cuneate 

 or more or less rounded at base, short-petiolulate, when they unfold lustrous, bronze-green, 

 and slightly pilose on the midrib and primary veins, and at maturity thin, dark green 

 above, pale beneath, 2'-3' long and 1|' wide, with a thin midrib occasionally furnished with, 

 small prickles and slender primary veins nearly parallel with their margins; in the autumn 

 turning light yellow before falling; stipules acute, about 1' long, at first puberulous on the 

 back and ciliate on the margins. Flowers T V long, appearing at midsummer on long 

 slender pubescent straw-colored pedicels, in many-flowered umbels arranged in compound 

 panicles, with light brown puberulous branches becoming purple in the autumn, forming 

 a terminal racemose cluster 3-4 long, and rising solitary or 2 or 3 together above the 

 spreading leaves; bracts and bractlets lanceolate, acute, scarious, persistent; petals white, 

 acute, inflexed at apex: ovary often abortive; styles connivent. Fruit ripening in autumn, 

 black, I' in diameter, globose, 3-5-angled, crowned with the blackened styles, with thin 

 purple very juicy flesh; seeds oblong, rounded at the ends, about iV long. 



A tree, 30-35 high, with a trunk 6'-8' in diameter, stout wide-spreading branches, and 

 branchlets |'-f ' in diameter, armed like the branches and young trunks with stout straight 

 of slightly incurved orange-colored scattered prickles, and nearly encircled by the conspicu- 

 ous narrow leaf-scars marked by a row of prominent fibro-vascular bundle-scars, light 

 orange-colored in their first season, lustrous and marked irregularly with oblong pale lenti- 

 cels, becoming light brown in their second year, with bright green inner bark; more often 

 a shrub, with a cluster of unbranched stems 6-20 tall. Winter-buds: terminal conic, 

 blunt at apex, |'-f' long, with thin chestnut-brown scales; axillary triangular, flattened, 

 about I' long and broad. Bark of the trunk dark brown, about f ' thick, and divided by 

 broad shallow fissures irito wide rounded ridges irregularly broken on the surface. Wood 

 close-grained, light, soft, brittle, brown streaked with yellow, with lighter colored sapwood 



