Japanese pepper

Zanthoxylum piperitum

Flower name
Japanese pepper
Scientific name
Zanthoxylum piperitum
AliasJapanese pepper, 山椒, 木の芽
Place of originKorean peninsula, Japan
Place of floweringGarden, Field
Flowering seasonApril, May

What is Japanese pepper

Birth flowers for Nov 22

Japanese pepper, scientific name:Zanthoxylum piperitum), is fallen leaves shrub of the Rutaceae zanthoxylum. A leaf and a flower, fruit become the materials of "the Japanese pepper" of the spice and are dioecism. It is a difficult point to be easy to gain the larvae of the swallowtail butterfly to a tree of Japanese pepper. The tree is yellow, and by one pair is sharp to a branch; is thorny. The leaf is green, and, in an odd pinnate compound leaf. The small leaf does an oval, and there is jaggedness in the leaf edge. The leaf grows each other and arrives. The flower makes small yellow green flowers bloom in spring. The fruit becoming after a flower is small at fist green, and red became ripe, does a cleavage, a black seed appears from the inside. Because there is a sweet smell to a young leave and fruit , it is dried and powder it and use it as materials of spice and the Goko powder, and omophagia does a fruit to foods boiled down in soy as a spice. It is the spice which there must be to the kabayaki of the eel. The wood is machined to a wooden pestle. The greatest production center of the Japanese pepper is Wakayama.

General name: Japanese pepper, scientific name:Zanthoxylum piperitum, aka: Sansyou(Japanese),origin: Korea, Japan, Habitat: Japan Hokkaido-Kyushu-Yakushima Island, environment: well drained fertile soil, living type: deciduous shrubs, tree height: 3-7 m, wood color: yellow, branch: sharp spines and leaf: odd pinnately compound leaves, biplane length: 10 cm, small leaf length 1 cm, small leaf: serrated, oval-shaped, leaf, leaf arrangement: alternate,Dioecious, flower color: yellow-green, flower diameter:0.5cm, flowering period: April-May, from:0.5cm fruit size, fruit color: green red color, after dehiscence.Fruit: aromatic and pungent, seed color: black, uses: spices, medicinal (leaves and fruit) and garnish (flower pepper, male), boiled, powdered spices, a wooden pestle (material), 5-spice powder. Note: the larva of a swallowtail Butterfly catches easily.