The generic name is from ξανθός and ξύλον.
CONSPECTUS OF THE ARBORESCENT SPECIES OF THE UNITED STATES.
Flowers in axillary contracted cymes; branches armed with stipular spines.1. [X. Fagara] (D, E). Flowers in terminal cymes. Calyx-lobes and petals 5; leaves unequally pinnate. Leaves deciduous; branches armed with stout spines.2. [X. clava-Herculis] (C). Leaves persistent; branches without spines.3. [X. flavum] (D). Calyx-lobes and petals 3; leaves equally pinnate, persistent.4. [X. coriaceum] (D).
1. [Xanthoxylum Fagara] Sarg. Wild Lime.
Fagara Fagara Small.
Leaves persistent, 3′—4′ long, with a broad-winged jointed petiole, and 7—9 obovate leaflets rounded or emarginate at apex, minutely crenulate-toothed above the middle, sessile, ½′ long or less, coriaceous, glandular-punctate, bright green and lustrous, with minute hooked deciduous stipular prickles. Flowers on short pedicels from the axils of minute ovate obtuse deciduous bracts, in short axillary contracted cymes, appearing singly or in pairs from April until June, on branches of the previous year, from minute dark brown globular buds, the staminate and pistillate flowers on different trees; sepals 4, membranaceous, much shorter than the 4 ovate yellow-green petals; stamens 4, with slender exserted filaments, 0 in the pistillate flower; pistils 2, with ovate sessile ovaries gradually contracted into long slender subulate exserted styles united near apex and crowned with obliquely spreading stigmas, rudimentary in the staminate flower. Fruit ripening in September, obovoid, rusty brown and rugose, ⅛′—¼′ long; seed dark and lustrous.
A tree, occasionally 25°—30° high, with a slender often inclining trunk, fastigiate branches, and more or less zigzag slender dark gray branchlets armed with sharp hooked stipular spines; more frequently a tall or low shrub. Bark of the trunk about ⅛′ 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.