''Zanthoxylum undulatifolium'' (from Latin ''undulati'', meaning wavy and ''folium'', meaning leaf. Chinese: 浪葉花椒, meaning "wavy-leaved prickly ash") is a

woody plant A woody plant is a plant that produces wood as its structural tissue and thus has a hard stem. In cold climates, woody plants further survive winter or dry season above ground, as opposed to Herbaceous plant, herbaceous plants that die back to t ...

from the

Rutaceae The Rutaceae () is a family (biology), family, commonly known as the rueRUTACEAE
in Bo ...

family. It is native to western

Hubei Hubei is a province of China, province in Central China. It has the List of Chinese provincial-level divisions by GDP, seventh-largest economy among Chinese provinces, the second-largest within Central China, and the third-largest among inland ...

, eastern

Sichuan Sichuan is a province in Southwestern China, occupying the Sichuan Basin and Tibetan Plateau—between the Jinsha River to the west, the Daba Mountains to the north, and the Yunnan–Guizhou Plateau to the south. Its capital city is Cheng ...

, Taibai Mountain in southern

Shaanxi Shaanxi is a Provinces of China, province in north Northwestern China. It borders the province-level divisions of Inner Mongolia to the north; Shanxi and Henan to the east; Hubei, Chongqing, and Sichuan to the south; and Gansu and Ningxia to t ...

to the

Three Gorges The Three Gorges () are three adjacent and sequential gorges along the middle reaches of the Yangtze River path, in the hinterland of the People's Republic of China. With a subtropical monsoon climate, they are known for their scenery. The T ...

of the

Yangtze River The Yangtze or Yangzi ( or ) is the longest river in Eurasia and the third-longest in the world. It rises at Jari Hill in the Tanggula Mountains of the Tibetan Plateau and flows including Dam Qu River the longest source of the Yangtze, i ...

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...

Description

Small arbor, about 3 meters high. New branches and leaf shafts have sporadic short thorns or no thorns, and brown rust-colored puberulent hairs. The leaves have 3-5 leaflets; which are ovate or ovate-

lanceolate The following terms are used to describe leaf plant morphology, morphology in the description and taxonomy (biology), taxonomy of plants. Leaves may be simple (that is, the leaf blade or 'lamina' is undivided) or compound (that is, the leaf blade ...

, 3–8 cm long, 1.5-3.5 cm wide, sparsely larger, short or acuminate at the top, and broadly wedge-shaped or nearly at the base. Their leaf margin is round and wavy, with blunt or round cracked teeth, 1 oil spot at the tooth gap, sporadic spots or none in the rest, visible only under a

magnifying glass A magnifying glass is a convex lens—usually mounted in a frame with a handle—that is used to produce a magnified image of an object. A magnifying glass can also be used to focus light, such as to concentrate the Sun's radiation to create ...

. The midrib is flat on the leaf surface, and the side veins are 6–10 on each side. The leaf is slender and branched near the leaf margin and extended to the crack tooth gap to join the oil spots. The back of the leaf is

glabrous Glabrousness () is the technical term for a lack of hair, down, setae, trichomes, or other such covering. A glabrous surface may be a natural characteristic of all or part of a plant or animal, or be due to loss because of a physical condition, ...

, while the leaf surface has loose puberulent hairs. The leaflet at the top of the leaf shaft is the largest and has a length of 6–10 mm. The small leaf stalks, the other leaf shafts on the two sides of the leaflets are sessile, the leaflets are opposite, reddish brown after drying. The

cymes In botany, an inflorescence is a group or cluster of flowers arranged on a plant's stem that is composed of a main branch or a system of branches. An inflorescence is categorized on the basis of the arrangement of flowers on a main axis ( ped ...

are terminal

corymb Corymb is a botanical term for an inflorescence with the flowers growing in such a fashion that the outermost are borne on longer pedicels than the inner, bringing all flowers up to a common level. A corymb has a flattish top with a superficial re ...

ose with 5-8

tepal A tepal is one of the outer parts of a flower (collectively the perianth). The term is used when these parts cannot easily be classified as either sepals or petals. This may be because the parts of the perianth are undifferentiated (i.e. of very ...

s. Its fruit stalks and lobes are reddish-brown, stalks are 7–14 mm long, 3-5 stalks are clustered on the top of the same total stalk; the diameter of a single stalk is about 5 mm, the top is almost without awns, the oil spot is large, and it is concave. The seed diameter is about 4 mm. The flowering period is from April to May, and the fruiting period from August to October.

Habitat

It can be found in mountain forests or vegetation shrubs at an altitude of 1600–2300 meters.

References

undulatifolium Articles with 'species' microformats Taxa named by William Hemsley (botanist) {{Rutaceae-stub