Zanthoxylum insulare Rose

Zanthoxylum insulare Rose, N. Am. Fauna 14 : 79. 1899
Fagara Culantrillo insularis Krug & Urban ; Urban, Bot. Jahrb. 21 : 574. 1896.
A glabrous shrub or tree 4-18 m. high with a grayish or grayish-brown bark bearing near the base hard-corky prickles 1.5-3 cm. long, which are sometimes concrescent, forming rows of conic or pyramidal elevations, or when young helmet-shaped or conic and supporting prickles ; branches rarely armed with a few prickles ; leaves odd-pinnate ; petioles and rachis grooved, narrowly winged, the wings often recurved ; leaflets 7-15, opposite or subopposite, oblanceolate to obovate, elliptic-oblong, or oval, 1.5-7 cm. long, 0.7-2.4 cm. broad, coarsely crenate, rounded and emarginate at the apex, cuneate at the base, in drying often becoming blackish or dark-brown, lustrous above, paler beneath ; pellucid glands scattered or wanting ; staminate flowers : sepals 4, thick, 0.5-0.8 mm. long, glandularthickened on the back, the outer ones semiorbicular, the inner triangular to semioval, narrower ; petals 4, in aestivation cochleate-imbricate, oblong-elliptic to oval, 3-3.5 mm. long, 1-1.4 mm. broad, rounded at the apex, rather thick, erect-spreading ; stamens 4 ; filaments longer than the petals ; anthers ovate or narrowly ovate, obtuse to short-apiculate at the apex ; rudimentary carpel conic, tapering into a subulate grooved style ; pistillate flowers : statninodes well developed, filiform ; anthers wanting ; gynophore shortly subconic ; gynoecium 1or 2-carpellary ; ovaries sessile; style somewhat recurved, long-persistent; stigma capitate ; follicles globose to obovoid, 5-7 mm. long, stipitate or subsessile, with or without an apiculation on the side near the apex ; seeds globose or nearly so, 3.5-5 mm. in diameter, black, shining.
Type locality : Maria Madre Island, Tres Marias, Mexico.
Distribution: Jamaica, Maria Madre, and Socorro islands; also in northern and western South America.