Paliurus ramosissimus
Sponsor
Kindly sponsored by
Dansk Dendrologisk Forening, The Danish Dendrology Society
Credits
Owen Johnson (2024)
Recommended citation
Johnson, O. (2024), 'Paliurus ramosissimus' from the website Trees and Shrubs Online (treesandshrubsonline.
Genus
Synonyms
- Aubletia ramosissima Lour.
- Paliurus aubletia Schult.
- Ziziphus ramosissima (Lour.) Spreng.
Shrub or small tree to c. 6 m tall. Spines short (4–17 mm long), both in each pair straight and standing above the twig. Leaves deciduous, ovate to broadly elliptic, 35–50(–70) × 22–50 mm, obtusely serrate or rarely entire; petiole 5–9 mm long. Drupe cup-shaped, small (11–15 mm wide), covered in dense yellow-brown hairs, base conical, tip flattened, the winged part thick and with 3 lobes around its margin. (Chen & Schirarend 2007).
Distribution China Anhui, Fujian, Guangdong, Guangxi, Guizhou, Hubei, Hunan, Jiangsu, Jiangxi, Sichuan, Yunnan, Zhejiang. Japan In the south South Korea Jeju Island Vietnam In northern mountains Taiwan
Habitat Plains and mountains, to 2000 m.
USDA Hardiness Zone 6
RHS Hardiness Rating H5
Conservation status Not evaluated (NE)
The most widely distributed Paliurus species in east Asia, P. ramosissimus is also commonly grown there as a hedge plant, for its hard wood, for its roots, branches, leaves, flowers and fruit which all have uses in Chinese herbal medicine, and for the oil extracted from its seeds which is used for making candles (Chen & Schirarend 2007; Plants for a Future 2024). In its small deciduous leaves it resembles the European P. spina-christi but its paired spines are shorter and both stand erect; the drupe is quite different, lacking the wide, flat sombrero-like rim and looking, when green and immature, more like a hellebore flower (but with a solid interior and only three ‘petals’ or lobes at the edge). The leaves are not carried below the zig-zag twig, and the flowers are not carried above it, in quite the same neat fashion of P. spina-christi.
Paliurus ramosissimus has only a shadowy presence in cultivation in the west. A shapely tree grows at Nice Botanical Garden in the south of France and the species has also been introduced to the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, Scotland, from seed collected on Jeju island (at the northernmost end of its wide natural distribution) in 1992, although it does not survive here as living material (Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh 2024). It is offered commercially as a sapling in France, and more widely as seed.
