Witnessed by: TCM

Dog pepper (Zanthoxylum schinifolium), of the Rutaceae family. Thorny deciduous shrub with fine pinnate leaves of many small narrow leaflets, finer than sanshō's; native range: China, Korea and Japan, in hill scrub, thickets and open woodland. Globally recognized as inuzanshō (犬山椒) in Japanese, qing jiao (青椒), ya jiao in Chinese, sancho in Korean, and dog pepper, mastic-leaved prickly ash in English. The part used is the ripe pericarp. Small greenish to greyish-green husks, oil-pitted, more greenish than the reddish sanshō and inuzanshō's flavour reckoned the weaker; aromatic and pungent, numbing on the tongue.

In this cross-tradition database, we analyze how this substance operates across world medicine systems — tracking its traditional tastes, temperatures, tissue affinities, post-digestive effects, and planetary correspondences across Ayurveda, Unani, and Western herbalism.

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