The fruit is a round wafer-like papery samara, across, light brown, and two-seeded. The fruit ripens in October, and is held on the tree until high winds shake them loose in the early winter. Wood Its wood is yellow brown; heavy, hard, close-grained, satiny. The specific gravity is 0.8319; weight per cubic foot is . Gallery Taxonomy While Ptelea trifoliata is most often treated as a single species with subspecies and/or varieties in different distribution ranges, some botanists treat the various hoptrees as a group of four or more closely related species: P. trifoliata subsp. trifoliata – common hoptree or eastern hoptree; eastern Canada & United States (U.S.), central U.S. P. trifoliata subsp. trifoliata var. trifoliata – eastern Canada & (U.S.), central U.S. P. trifoliata subsp trifoliata var. mollis Torr. & A. Gray – eastern and central U.S. P. trifoliata subsp. angustifolia (Benth.) V.L.Bailey – south-central U.S. P. trifoliata subsp. angustifolia var. angustifolia (Benth.) M.E.Jones (P. angustifolia, P. lutescens) – narrowleaf hoptree; south-central U.S. P. trifoliata subsp. angustifolia var. persicifolia (Greene) V.L.Bailey – south-central U.S. P. trifoliata subsp. pallida (Greene) V.L.Bailey – pallid hoptree, south-central and southwest U.S. P. trifoliata subsp. pallida var. pallida (Greene) V.L.Bailey – southwest U.S. P. trifoliata subsp. pallida var. cognata (Greene) Kearney & Peebles – southwest U.S. P. trifoliata subsp. pallida var. confinis (Greene) V.L.Bailey – south-central and southwest U.S. P. trifoliata subsp. pallida var. lutescens – southwest U.S. P. trifoliata subsp. polyadenia (Greene) V.L.Bailey – pallid hoptree, south-central and southwest U.S. P. trifoliata var. baldwinii (Torr. & A.Gray) D.B.Ward (P. baldwinii) The specific epithet "trifoliata" refers to the three-parted compound leaf. Other common names for this shrub include stinking prairie bush, Carolina shrub-trefoil, tree-trefoil, swamp dogwood, ague bark, paleleaf hoptree, prairie-grub, prickaway-anise, quinine tree, sang-tree, water-ash, western hoptree, wingseed, and woolly hoptree. Distribution and habitat Ptelea trifoliata is native to North America, where its northern limits are in Ontario and Quebec, Canada. It is native through much of the eastern and southwestern United States, although it is absent from some areas of the Upper Midwest and is rare in much of New England. Its southern limits are in Mexico. It has a wide-ranging natural habitat. In the Southeastern United States it is most often found in rocky forests, in both moist and dry soil, often associated with calcareous or mafic substrates. In the Midwest, habitats include forests, savannas, prairies, glades, and sand dunes. In