Photo: James H. Miller & Ted Bodner, Southern Weed Science Society, Bugwood.org, CC BY 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Devil's Walking Stick
Aralia spinosa
Also called hercules' club, angelica tree, prickly elder.
Two-foot heads of white flowers in August when little else blooms, then purple-black fruit for thrushes and waxwings, on a stem with leaves up to 5 feet long.
Wildlife valueShowy flowersFall color
- Type
- Small tree
- Mature height
- 10–20 ft
- USDA zones
- 4–9
- Growth rate
- Fast
- Sun
- Full · Part
- Soil moisture
- Average · Wet
210
Devil's walking stick is a spiny, few-branched shrub or small tree of the ginseng family, native from New York and Pennsylvania south to Florida and west to Texas, on woodland edges, stream banks, moist bottoms and pastures wherever the canopy opens. Each club-like stem, ringed with prickles, carries an umbrella of doubly or triply compound leaves 2 to 5 feet long. From July into September, when few other woody plants are in bloom, it opens panicles of tiny white flowers up to 2 feet long that bees, butterflies and other insects crowd; by September and October the flowers have become purple-black drupes on red stalks that thrushes, waxwings, white-throated sparrows and many other birds strip, with foxes, raccoons and black bears. The leaves turn yellow to dull purple in fall. Ideal for a woodland edge, a wet corner or a back fence where a late-summer bee plant can spread.
It is seldom planted because of the spines and because it suckers from long rhizomes into a colony the Wildflower Center calls far too aggressive for small spaces, though Victorians grew it as a curiosity. A pioneer, it fills clearings and fades as the forest closes over it, and cutting only makes it sprout harder. A stem stays unbranched until its first flower head at about three and a half years, and a hard winter can kill it to the ground, from which it returns. The bark and roots give some people a rash.
How to grow Devil's Walking Stick
Devil's walking stick grows in full sun or part shade, zones 4 through 9, and does best in sun. It prefers moist, fertile loam but takes clay, rock, sand, any pH, occasionally wet ground and, once established, drought. Plants reach 10 to 20 feet tall and a colony spreads without limit, so give it 10 feet from paths and buildings and a spot out of strong wind, which shreds the big leaves.
Plant dormant bare-root or potted plants from leaf fall until bud swell, in a hole wider than the roots and no deeper, crown at the soil line, native soil back in, mulch clear of the stem. Seed is ready when the fruit drops in September and October and the nutlets inside are hard. Clean off the pulp the same day, because the fruit ferments, then sow it at once a quarter inch deep in a bed outdoors for the winter, or refrigerate it damp for 3 months and sow in spring; unchilled seed barely germinates. Seedlings appear in spring.
Water weekly through the first summer if rain is short. Deer browse it a little and bucks rub the stems, so cage it the first two years, and keep mulch thin at the base so voles do not nest there. No pruning is needed. Cut suckers at the ground wherever the colony is not wanted, in gloves and long sleeves; the bark can raise a rash.
Growth is fast, and a stem flowers first at three to four years old. The flowers are mostly perfect, so a single plant sets fruit. Leaf spots, aphids and mealybugs turn up but do no lasting harm, and a severe winter may kill stems to the ground; it resprouts. The unripe fruit is mildly toxic, worth knowing where small children play.
Heights and zones are typical ranges for the species in cultivation; local conditions and seed source shift them.
- Multistem or single stem? Sometimes the trunk is hiding the answer
- Leaf litter, not wood chips, under the canopy
- Native trees and shrubs for birds: caterpillars, fruit, mast, nests and winter cover, month by month
- Native trees and shrubs for bees: pollen, nectar, nesting and a bloom calendar from willow to witch hazel
- Ten planting mistakes that quietly kill trees
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