Plant · P-650

Prickly Ash

Zanthoxylum americanum

Prickly Ash is a thicket-forming, thorny eastern North American shrub whose bark gave it the common name toothache tree - chewing it numbs the mouth and it has a long history as a remedy for toothache, rheumatism and digestive complaints. Its small red-to-black fruits work as a pepper substitute, and its bruised leaves smell resinous and orange-like. It runs by underground suckers, and left alone a single plant spreads into a clonal thicket that makes a self-building, thorny stock barrier needing no maintenance beyond keeping a mown strip at the edge. It is dioecious and not self-fertile, so a fruiting stand needs both sexes planted from separate parent stock; a single plant's own suckers are all one sex and will never fruit on their own.