I saw this tree in a neighborhood park yesterday. Wow. I have never seen anything like it, and I have been obsessed with trying to identify it.

My guess was that it was a Kapok tree, (Ceiba sp.). However, Ceiba sp. was not native, and I just wasn’t sure…so I contacted Catherine at the Ceiba Foundation for Tropical Conservation. She believed it was more likely to be a Zanthoxylum tree, but needed to see the leaves to be sure. As luck would have it, there were no leaves remaining on the tree.

It turns out that the Zanthoxylum tree is native to the Southeastern US! I think the chances of this tree being a non-native, tropical rainforest tree are zilch. Now that we know that it is native, you can bet I’ll be keeping an eye out for it.

The species is probably Zanthoxylum clava-herculis, commonly known as Hercules Club or Prickly Ash. The name “Hercules Club” is derived from the spiked-club look of the trunk and bark.¹

Close-up of a thorn-tipped knob.

This is a view of the trunk where it emerges from the forest floor.

I recently received several old field guides as a gift. One of them is a tree guide, from 1914! I looked up the Hercules Club tree in this guide, because old field guides often include folksy, colorful comments indicative of that period in history. The only reason I haven’t referenced one of these field guide treasures yet, is that I simply  haven’t photographed and posted about a bird or plant that is entertainingly described.

Well, welcome to the first one, but “entertaining” is NOT the way to describe it. I was shocked, frankly, but then I remembered it was written in 1914. It seems fitting to juxtapose a sentence from an old field guide entry about a tree, to the present time when America has elected an African-American as our next President.

Prickly Ash; Hercules’ Club…Abundant in Eastern Texas. Almost exterminated elsewhere, by the collecting of bark by negroes.

From The Tree Guide: Trees East of the Rockies, ©1914 Doubleday, Page & Company, written by Julia Ellen Rogers.

I had to read it twice. The word “exterminated” in a field guide about trees strikes me as negative, rather than neutral or positive. However it strikes you, we can all probably agree that this comment would not be politically correct today. Because the bark from this tree was used to treat rheumatism and toothaches, one could speculate that people unable to pay for medications might treat these conditions with such natural resources. In my opinion, that sentence *feels* racist, but perhaps it is nothing more than a factual relay of information couched in language that was acceptable at the time.

The Hercules Club tree is a larval host to the Giant Swallowtail, and its fruit is eaten by birds.

I’ll leave you with one more photo, courtesy of my father, Thomas T. Coakley.