PRICKLY ASH; HERCULES' CLUB; TOOTHACHE TREE (Fag ara Clava-Flerculis, Small). Shrub to 30 feet. Round-headed tree, with bird-claw, stout spines inch or more in length arm ing twigs, leaf-stalks and older limbs. Bark gray, roughened by warty tubercles on which spines are mounted. Sap bitter, burning. Bark collected locally for use in treatment of rheu matism and toothache. Called "sting tongue," produces copius flow of saliva when chewed. Leaves compound, 5 to 8 inches long, of 3 to 9 pairs of opposite leaflets, and a terminal, odd one, oval, pointed, serrate, lustrous, green above, paler, pubescent beneath, almost evergreen. Flowers small, green
ish, clustered on ends of branches, mixed. Fruit in dense clusters of I-seeded, dry, brown carpels, from which the seeds hang when ripe, in late summer. Dist.: Virginia to Florida, and following the Gulf coast to Texas, north to Arkansas. Abundant in eastern Texas. Almost exterminated elsewhere by the collecting of bark by negroes •