112 ABALIACEAE 



ACANTHOPANAX. 



Deciduous shrubs or stiff sparingly branched trees with 

 more or less prickly bark; pale soft wood with a single ring of 

 large ducts each year and tangential wavy wood-parenchyma 

 bands; rounded homogeneous pale pith; alternate ovoid buds 

 with several scales; crescent-shaped or linear leaf scars with 5 

 or more bundle-traces; digitate or palmately lobed moderate 

 sized leaves, often clustered on spurs; small often monoecious 

 greenish polypetalous flowers in umbels or panicles; and small 

 berry-like fruit crowned by the calyx-teeth. (Aralia). 



1. Leaves simple: a tree. A. ricinifolius. 

 Leaves digitately compound: shrubs. 2. 



2. Leaves green. A. pentaphyllus. 

 Variegated. A. pentaphyllus variegatus. 



ARALIA. Hercules' Club. 



Deciduous large coarse shrubs or arborescent (herbaceous 

 in other species), with very stout prickles; brownish zoned 

 wood with small ducts, more crowded in the spring growth 

 and slightly tangentially seriate later, and fine but distinct 

 medullary rays; large crenate homogeneous pale pith; very 

 stout terete twigs; alternate large U-shaped or linear leaf- 

 scars half encircling the stem, with numerous bundle-traces in 

 a single series; no stipule-scars; rounded buds with few 

 pointed scales; very large decompound leaves; small white 

 polypetalous perfect flowers in large showy panicles; and 

 small inferior berries. 

 Leaves prickly: leaflets stalked, whitened and glabrate 



beneath, with upcurved veins. (Tear blanket). A. spinosa. 

 Leaves nearly unarmed: leaflets nearly sessile, pubescent, 



with straight veins. (Dimorphanthus). A. chinensis. 



HEDEKA. Ivy. 



Evergreen shrubs, climbing by aerial roots, with pale 

 wood with minute ducts rather crowded in spring and tangen- 

 tially seriate in summer, and very coarse medullary rays in- 

 terspersed between the more numerous finer ones; moderate 



