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Zanthoxylum armatum
Winged prickly ash is a spiny, deciduous, aromatic shrub or small tree up to about 3.5 m tall, native across South and East Asia. Its prickly branches and winged leaf stalks are its key features, and it is grown mainly for its peppery fruit and as an ornamental.
Zanthoxylum armatum, also called winged prickly ash or rattan pepper in English, is a species of plant in the family Rutaceae. It is an aromatic, deciduous, spiny shrub growing to 3.5 metres (11 ft) in height, endemic from Pakistan across to Southeast Asia and up to Korea and Japan. It is one of the sources of the spice Sichuan pepper, and also used in folk medicine, essential oil production and as an ornamental garden plant.
Zanthoxylum armatum is native to parts of East and Southeast Asia, and the north of the Indian sub-continent. It is naturalised in several regions. Regions where it occurs are: Japan; Nansei-shoto/Ryukyu Islands; Korea; North-Central, South-Central & Southeast China, specifically Anhui, Fujian, South Gansu, Guangdong, Guangxi, Guizhou, South Henan, Hubei, Hunan, Jiangsu, Jiangxi, Shaanxi, Shandong, South Shanxi, Sichuan, Xizang, Yunnan, and Zhejiang; northern Taiwan; Philippines; Vietnam; Laos; Thailand; Myanmar; Bangladesh; India, including Assam; Bhutan; Nepal; Tibet; the Eastern and Western Himalayas; Kashmir; and Pakistan, and possibly Indonesia. It has been naturalised in Northeast Argentina and the North Caucasus.
The fruit and seeds of the plant are used as a spice, timut pepper, related to Sichuan pepper, but less pungent, while the bark, fruit and seeds are used in indigenous medicines in India, Nepal and Thailand. The plant is also a source of an essential oil, Wartara Oil, and the shrub is also grown as an ornamental garden plant.
Zanthoxylum acanthopodium · Alianthus Like Prickly Ash · Common pricklyash · Climbing Orange · Sichuan Pepper · Hercules' club · Zanthoxylum coco · African Satinwood · Zanthoxylum laetum · Chopi · Cape Yellowwood · Mastic Leaf Prickly Ash
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Zanthoxylum armatum by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
