糙叶花椒 cao ye hua jiao

Zanthoxylum asperum C. C. Huang; Z. scabrum Guillaumin.

Woody climbers. Branchlets with prickles. Younger branchlets, leaf rachises, petiolules, and abaxial surface of leaflet blades villous. Leaves 5-9-foliolate; petiolules 2-4 mm; leaflet blades opposite, broadly ovate to ovate-elliptic, 7-19 × 5-8 cm, papery, black to blackish brown when dry, slightly lustrous, adaxially hirsutulous, midvein with prickles, secondary veins 8-12 on each side of midvein, base oblique and rounded to subcordate, margin entire to crenate, apex mucronate, caudate, or rarely acuminate and with a retuse tip and an oil gland. Inflorescences axillary, 3-5 cm. Flowers 4-merous. Pedicel puberulent. Perianth in 2 series. Sepals puberulent, ca. 1 mm. Petals ca. 3 mm. Male flowers: stamens 4; rudimentary gynoecium ca. 1.5 mm. Fruit pedicel 2-4 mm; follicles ca. 6 mm in diam., pubescent, oil glands impressed when dry. Seeds 4.5-5 mm in diam. Fl. Apr-May, fr. Sep-Oct.

Hillside open forests and thickets; 500-1000 m. NW Guangxi, SW Guizhou, S Yunnan [Laos, NE Thailand, N Vietnam].

Hartley (J. Arnold Arbor. 47: 181. 1966) placed Zanthoxylum collinsiae, Z. asperum, and Z. scabrum in the synonymy of Z. nitidum.