Zanthoxylum clava-herculisL.

Hercules' club

WFO wfo-0001132900 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Zanthoxylum clava-herculis, photographed by Joseph Aubert
fig. a Joseph Aubert, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-04 / obs. 204034787
Zanthoxylum clava-herculis, photographed by Josiah Londerée
fig. b Josiah Londerée, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 196244307
Zanthoxylum clava-herculis, photographed by Ryan Watson
fig. c Ryan Watson, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 194532279
Zanthoxylum clava-herculis, photographed by Annika Lindqvist
fig. d Annika Lindqvist, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 195118022
Zanthoxylum clava-herculis, photographed by Annika Lindqvist
fig. e Annika Lindqvist, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 194366377
Zanthoxylum clava-herculis, photographed by Reid Hardin
fig. f Reid Hardin, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 194548670
Zanthoxylum clava-herculis, photographed by John Kees
fig. g John Kees, CC0 1.0 / obs. 183205974
Zanthoxylum clava-herculis, photographed by Annika Lindqvist
fig. h Annika Lindqvist, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 195089006

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Flowering n = 76 observations

Peak flowering in Apr, from 76 community-annotated observations worldwide. This is a global aggregate, not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres, and citizen-science records cluster near cities, at weekends, and in spring. Where a species has fewer than 30 annotated records we do not draw this chart at all.

Also published as 26 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Fagara caroliniana (Lam.) Engl.
  • Fagara clava-herculis (L.) Small
  • Fagara clava-herculis var. fruticosa Sarg.
  • Fagara fraxinifolia Lam.
  • Fagara fruticosa Small
  • Kampmannia fraxinifolium Raf.
  • Pseudopetalon glandulosum Raf.
  • Pseudopetalon tricarpum Raf.
  • Xanthophyllon clava-herculis (L.) St.-Lag.
  • Xanthophyllon clavatum St.-Lag.
  • Zanthoxylum alveolatum Shuttlew. ex S.Watson
  • Zanthoxylum aromaticum Willd.
  • Zanthoxylum aromaticum (Blume) Miq.
  • Zanthoxylum carolinianum Lam.
  • Zanthoxylum carolinianum var. fruticosum A.Gray
  • Zanthoxylum catesbianum Raf.
  • Zanthoxylum clava-herculis var. fruticosum (A.Gray) A.Gray
  • Zanthoxylum clavatum St.-Lag.
  • Zanthoxylum digynum Engelm. ex A.Gray
  • Zanthoxylum fraxinifolium Walter
  • Zanthoxylum glandulosum (Raf.) Raf.
  • Zanthoxylum hidalgense Lundell
  • Zanthoxylum hirsutum Buckley
  • Zanthoxylum macrophyllum Nutt.

and 2 more.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice, no toxicity claim and no native range, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.