Zanthoxylum laetum Drake

Woody climbers to 4 m tall. Trunk, branches, branchlets, and leaf rachises with prickles. Rachis of young leaves, petiolules, and midvein of leaflet blades puberulent. Leaves 5-13-foliolate; petiolules 2-6 mm; leaflet blades alternate, ovate, ovate-elliptic, or rarely oblong, 8-15 × 4-7 cm, adaxially lustrous, oil glands sparse, inconspicuous, and pellucid, midvein plane to adaxially impressed, secondary veins 9-14 on each side of midvein, base symmetric or rarely oblique, margin entire, apex acuminate. Inflorescences axillary. Flowers 4-merous. Pedicel ca. 4 mm. Perianth in 2 series. Sepals pale purplish green, narrowly ovate, to 1 mm. Petals yellowish green, broadly ovate, ca. 4 mm. Male flowers: filaments pale yellowish green, linear, 6-8 mm; rudimentary gynoecium terete, 4-lobed. Female flowers: staminodes shortly linear. Fruit pedicel 2-5 mm; follicles reddish brown with purplish red margin, 7-9 mm in diam., with a flange, oil glands impressed when dry, apex beaked. Seeds brownish black, subglobose, 6-7 mm in diam. Fl. Mar-May, fr. Sep-Dec.

Guangdong (Zhanjiang), SW Guangxi, Hainan, S Yunnan [N Vietnam].

Moist thickets and forests; 500-1300 m.

Zanthoxylum dissitoides C. C. Huang.