The park behind our house (Painshill Park in fact) was constructed in the 1700s by an eccentric guy called Charles Hamilton:
Many of the trees and shrubs planted by Hamilton were obtained from exotic sources abroad and so the park contains many specimen trees you wouldn’t expect to see in England, including this one which we discovered during one of our walks:
It’s Zanthoxylum americanum, otherwise known as the Northern prickly-ash or “toothache tree”. Maybe it’s familiar to those of you living in the Central and Eastern parts of the US or Canada but it’s a rarity over here… particularly large, mature specimens like this.
It was almost certainly sent to him as seed or sapling from Philadelphia (this won’t be first-generation since it’s a colony-forming tree) by the early American botanist and explorer John Bartram, with whom Hamilton had numerous communications about obtaining unusual trees and shrubs:
Bartram learned that the natives chewed on the leaves, bark, or twigs of this tree because they released a natural analgesic that numbed the mouth, tongue, teeth and gums. As such it was used to alleviate toothache and prior to pulling out infected teeth. Early settlers adopted it for the same purposes. There are numerous ethnographic records, including:
Alabama Indians: Pounded inner bark put into cavity and packed around the tooth for toothaches.
Comanche Tribes: Root bark held against tooth for toothache; roots pulverized and used for toothache.
Iroquois People: Bark smoked for toothaches or neuralgia; bark smoked, chewed or placed into the tooth for toothaches.
Meskwaki Indians: Powdered inner bark used for toothache.
Note the large tooth-shaped thorns… and there are folklore beliefs in several cultures that nature provides clues for medicinal usefulness of plants by appropriate shaping. That doesn’t hold much water since there are even more references for the related Zanthoxylum clava-herculis which, despite a more limited distribution in the SE United States, has documented ethnographic use among even more tribes for everything from tuberculosis to gonorrhea.
Many of the trees and shrubs planted by Hamilton were obtained from exotic sources abroad and so the park contains many specimen trees you wouldn’t expect to see in England, including this one which we discovered during one of our walks:
It’s Zanthoxylum americanum, otherwise known as the Northern prickly-ash or “toothache tree”. Maybe it’s familiar to those of you living in the Central and Eastern parts of the US or Canada but it’s a rarity over here… particularly large, mature specimens like this.
It was almost certainly sent to him as seed or sapling from Philadelphia (this won’t be first-generation since it’s a colony-forming tree) by the early American botanist and explorer John Bartram, with whom Hamilton had numerous communications about obtaining unusual trees and shrubs:
Bartram learned that the natives chewed on the leaves, bark, or twigs of this tree because they released a natural analgesic that numbed the mouth, tongue, teeth and gums. As such it was used to alleviate toothache and prior to pulling out infected teeth. Early settlers adopted it for the same purposes. There are numerous ethnographic records, including:
Alabama Indians: Pounded inner bark put into cavity and packed around the tooth for toothaches.
Comanche Tribes: Root bark held against tooth for toothache; roots pulverized and used for toothache.
Iroquois People: Bark smoked for toothaches or neuralgia; bark smoked, chewed or placed into the tooth for toothaches.
Meskwaki Indians: Powdered inner bark used for toothache.
Note the large tooth-shaped thorns… and there are folklore beliefs in several cultures that nature provides clues for medicinal usefulness of plants by appropriate shaping. That doesn’t hold much water since there are even more references for the related Zanthoxylum clava-herculis which, despite a more limited distribution in the SE United States, has documented ethnographic use among even more tribes for everything from tuberculosis to gonorrhea.
Comment