Hercules-club, Zanthoxylum clava-herculis, is an interesting tree that has a specific epithet that means the same thing as the common name although the genus name meaning yellow wood does not enter into the confusion for that common name, which already includes three dissimilar species. Other common names include southern prickly-ash and southern toothache tree considering that the northern distinctions are given to Z. americanum. The tree has pinnately compound leaves and is notable for being covered with spines. The spines persist with their bases growing into large warts. This could get it grouped with grotesque ornamentals beside its common name already being confused with another one, devil's walkingstick, Aralia spinosa, which has very large twice and even thrice pinnately compounded leaves as well as a different pattern and appearance of the spines. The common name toothache tree as well as tickle tongue refers to a medical use due to the numbing effect chewing on the bark and leaves have. I have seen it growing wild only twice first on Dolphin Island during a dendrology class and then years later as Joe Wheeler State Park, although one of the state co-champions is in Blakely State Park standing 30 feet tall, with a circumference of 59 inches, and an average limb spread of 29 feet.
Whenever possible the
Scottsboro Tree Commission likes to include something unusually, if only out of
curiosity, for their Arbor Day tree give away.
One year they had ordered a box of toothache tree seedlings, and fortunately
this was the first year that I volunteered to help hand out the trees. Because I was the only one there who had ever
heard of toothache trees much less seen one before then I was put in charge of
their distribution and answering any questions about them. Each person was limited to getting just two
or three seedlings apiece, but enough people were scared off by the spines that
several more seedlings were left over relative to the much larger quantities of
other species being given out in such handfuls there is defiantly the
possibility of overplanting, but it seems like this more often results in a
whoops. My biggest toothache tree has been growing
faster every year and it is now taller than me.
These trees are in the same family as orange trees and coincidentally
there are many more species that are native to tropical and sub-tropical areas
of the country including