Short flat hill with very prickly tree (8)

I believe the answer is:

mesquite

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'tree' is the definition.
(I've seen this before)

'short flat hill with very prickly' is the wordplay.
'short' means to remove the last letter.
'flat hill' becomes 'mesa' (I've seen this before).
'with' is a charade indicator (letters next to each other).
'very prickly' becomes 'quite' (I can't justify this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'mesa' with its last letter taken away is 'mes'.
'mes'+'quite'='MESQUITE'

Can you help me to learn more?

(Another definition for mesquite that I've seen is " tree".)

I've seen this clue in The Hindu.

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