Aralia spinosa
| Aralia spinosa | |
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| Clump of Aralia spinosa Nesmith, South Carolina | |
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| Species: | A. spinosa
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| Aralia spinosa | |
Aralia spinosa, commonly known as Devil's Walking-stick, Hercules' Club, Prickly Ash, or Prickly Elder, is a woody species of plants in the genus Aralia, family Araliaceae, native to eastern North America. The various names refer to the viciously sharp, spiny stems, petioles, and even leaf midribs. It has also been known as Angelica-tree.[1]
This species is occasionally cultivated for its exotic, tropical appearance, having large lacy compound leaves. It is closely related to the Asian species Aralia elata, a more commonly cultivated species with which it is easily confused.
Description
Aralia spinosa is an aromatic spiny deciduous shrub or small tree growing 2-8 m tall, with a simple or occasionally branched stem with very large bipinnate leaves 70-120 cm long. The trunks are six to eight inches wide with plants umbrella-like in habit with open crowns with stout wide spreading branches occasionally produced, though plants generally grow in clusters of trunks that are branchless. [1]
The flowers are creamy-white, individually small (about 5 mm across) but produced in large composite panicles 30-60 cm long; flowering is in the late summer. The fruit is a purplish-black berry 6-8 mm diameter, ripening in the fall. The roots are thick and fleshy.
The young stem is stout, thickly covered with sharp spines and for the most part branchless or slightly branching, so that when denuded of its leaves it looks very like a club, whence its common name Hercules' Club. The leaves are the largest of any tree in the continental United States, although the casual observer might not think so, as the leaflets are but two to three inches long. The leaves, however, are so compound, in this case doubly pinnate and sometimes pinnate again, that when one measures from the swollen base of the prickly petiole to the apex of the farthest leaflet the tape frequently records three feet and the spread of the pinnae from side to side is often two feet. In the autumn these leaves turn to a peculiar bronze red touched with yellow which makes the tree conspicuous and beautiful.[1]
The habit of growth and general appearance of the Hercules' Club are unique. It is usually found as a group of unbranched stems, rising to the height of twelve to twenty feet, which bear upon their summits a crowded cluster of doubly compound leaves, thus giving to each stem a certain tropical palm-like appearance. This slender, swaying, palm-like character is in the north only true of the young plants, for after a single stem has buffeted the storms of many winters it becomes a scrubby, deformed, little tree whose great leaves can scarcely cover its ugliness even in summer. In the south it is said to reach the height of fifty feet, still retaining its palm-like aspect.[1]
- Bark: Light brown, divided into rounded broken ridges. Branchlets one-half to two-thirds of an inch in diameter, armed with stout, straight or curved, scattered prickles and nearly encircled by narrow leaf scars. At first light yellow brown, shining and dotted, later light brown.
- Wood: Brown with yellow streaks; light, soft, brittle, close-grained.
- Winter buds: Terminal bud chestnut brown, one-half to three-fourths of an inch long, conical, blunt; axillary buds flattened, triangular, one-fourthe of an inch in length.
- Leaves: Clustered at the end of the branches, compound, bi- and tri-pinnate, three to four feet long, two and a half feet broad. The pinnae are unequally pinnate, having five or six pairs of leaflets and a long stalked terminal leaflet; these leaflets are often themselves pinnate. The last leaflets are ovate, two to three inches long, wedge-shaped or rounded at base, serrate or dentate, acute; midrib and primary veins prominent. They come out of the bud a bronze green, shining, somewhat hairy; when full grown are dark green above, pale beneath; midribs frequetly furnished with prickles. Petioles stout, light brown, eighteen to twenty inches in length, clasping, armed with prickles. Stipules acute, one-half inch long.
- Flowers: July, August. Perfect or polygamo-monoecious, cream white, borne in many-flowered umbels arranged in compound panicles, forming a terminal racemose cluster, three to four feet in length which rises, solitary or two or three together, above the spreading leaves. Bracts and bractlets lanceolate, acute, persistent.
- Calyx: Calyx tube coherent with the ovary, minutely five-toothed.
- Corolla: Petals five, white, inserted on margin of the disk, acute, slightly inflexed at the apex, imbricate in bud.
- Stamens: Five, inserted on margin of the disk, alternate with the petals; filaments thread-like; anthers oblong, attached on the back, introrse, two-celled; cells opening longitudianlly.
- Pistil: Ovary inferior, five-celled; styles five, connivent; stigmas capitate.
- Fruit: Berry-like drupe, globular, black, one-fourth of an inch long, five-angled, crowned with the blackened styles. Flesh thin, dark.[1]
Distribution
Ranges from Pennsylvania westward to Missouri and southward to Texas. Prefers a deep moist soil.[1] The plants typically grow in the forest understory or at the edges of forests, often forming clonal thickets by sprouting from the roots.
Uses
Bark of the root and the berries have been used in medicine, principally in domestic practice.[1]
The young leaves can be eaten if gathered before the prickles harden. They are chopped finely and cooked as a potherb.
Aralia spinosa was introduced into cultivation in 1688 and is still grown for its decorative foliage , prickly stems and large showy flower panicles. Plants are tough and durable, doing well in urban settings. Plants are slow growing and can be propagated from seeds and root cuttings.[2]