Zanthoxylum clava-herculis
species of plant
Zanthoxylum clava-herculis, the Hercules' club, Hercules-club, pepperwood, or southern prickly ash, is a spiny tree or shrub native to the southeastern United States.
Description
The tree grows to 10–17 m tall and has distinctive spined thick, corky lumps 2–3 cm long on the bark. The leaves are glabrous and leathery,
pinnately compound, 20–30 cm long with 7-19 leaflets, each leaflet 4–5 cm long. The flowers are dioecious, in panicles up to 20 cm long, each flower small, 6–8 mm in diameter, with 3-5 white petals. The fruit is a two-valved capsule 6 mm in diameter with a rough surface, and containing several small black seeds. The tree has also been called Z. macrophyllum. The genus name is sometimes spelled Xanthoxylum.
Common names and uses
Along with the related Zanthoxylum americanum, it is sometimes called "toothache tree" or "tingle tongue" because chewing on the leaves, bark, or twigs causes a tingling numbness of the mouth, tongue, teeth and gums. It was used for such medicinal purposes by both Native Americans and early settlers to treat toothache because of this.
Habitats
The tree has a rounded crown and requires plentiful water and sunlight.
“Zanthoxylum clava-herculis” enters the record as species of plant. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Zanthoxylum, clava-herculis and species can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Stable identifiers, scientific names and standards terminology offer the best bridge between this overview and specialist evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 3, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q8066279. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Zanthoxylum clava-herculis” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.