Zanthoxylum khasianum - Khasi Yellow-Wood

Khasi Yellow-Wood is a shrub or tree, up to 3 m tall. Branchlets are gray, with prickles. Young branchlets, inflorescences, leaf axises, and upper surface of leaflet blades have long grayish yellow trichomes. Leaves are 5-13-foliolate; leaflet-stalks 4-10 mm, winged. Leaflet blades are alternate or rarely nearly opposite, ovate to elliptic, asymmetric, 3.5-9 x 2-4 cm, papery, midvein above impressed, secondary veins 10-16 on each side of midvein, base wedge-shaped, margin crenulate or apically crenulate-minutely toothed, tip with a tail. Flowers are borne at branch-ends or in leaf-axils, in thyrses. Flowers are 4-merous. Petals are in 2 series. Sepals are ovate, about 0.5 mm, margin ciliolate. Petals are long elliptic, 2-3 mm. Female flowers: staminodes about 1 mm. Fruit flower-stalk 7-10 mm, hairy; follicles oblique, 5-6 mm, tip beaked. The leaves are used as vegetable, fruits aromatic, give a tingling sensation and usually used for chutney /spice. Khasi Yellow-Wood is found in hillside thickets and open forests, at altitudes of 1500-2500 m, in W Yunnan and NE India. Flowering: May-June.