Zanthoxylum humile (E.A.Bruce) P.G.Waterman

Deciduous shrub up to 2 m. high; branches and rhachis of the leaves cinereous-tomentose or pubescent or glabrescent, ± densely aculeate, aculei on the stems straight or ± recurved, 2-8 mm long, greyish or reddish, those of the rhachis recurved and up to 2 mm long; branches with terminal buds protected by cottony scales. Leaves 4-16 cm long; rhachis terete, rarely slightly grooved above. Leaflets chartaceous, sessile, (4)6-12(14)-jugate, opposite or alternate, the distal ones smaller, the terminal one usually present (rarely aborted), 0.8-2.5 x 0.5-1.2 cm, elliptic to broadly elliptic or ovate, slightly asymmetric, with pellucid gland-dots in the marginal sinuses only, obtuse or rounded at the apex, margin crenulate, rounded or almost cuneate at the base; lateral nerves 3-4 pairs. Inflorescence of racemes 1-3 cm long, borne on branches of the previous year before or with the leaves but not or very rarely in the axils of the latter. Flowers 5-merous. Male flowers: pedicels 1-1.5 mm long; sepals 5, slightly united at the base, 0-6 mm long, persistent on the fruit; petals 5, 3-4 x 1-1.3 mm, imbricate, narrowly elliptic; stamens 5, with linear filaments c. 3 mm long; anthers 1.5 mm long, narrowly oblong, basifixed, deeply 2-lobed at the base and laterally dehiscent; ovary vestigial, on a short gynophore. Female flowers: sessile or subsessile; staminodes 5, reduced to the abortive anthers at the base of a short gynophore; ovary c. 1 mm long, ovoid, oblique, 1-locular, 2-ovulate; style 1 mm long, lateral, incurved; stigma subglobose. Fruit 4-5 mm in diam., subglobose, gland-dotted. Seed black, shiny.