Pepperwood or Hercules Club

Note Profile

Botanical 3 perfumes

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About

Pepperwood, or Hercules club, is the leaf and bark of a thorny prickly ash from the southern United States. The crushed leaf smells of lime with a cool, eucalyptus-like edge. The bark is drier, with a woody, peppery side.

Scent Profile

Pepperwood smells strongly of citrus, closer to bitter lime than to sweet orange. The crushed leaf adds a cool, eucalyptus-like freshness and a green, herbal lift. Underneath sits a dry bark note, woody and lightly peppery. The bitterness in the lime gives it a slightly sour edge.

ScentWheel

Breadthbroad

EnvelopeTop · ~2h lasting

Family Fresh & Citrus, Spicy

Read off the wheel, not a label applied to the note.

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ScentArt

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Origin

Zanthoxylum clava-herculis, a thorny Rutaceae tree of the southern United States. It is sold as Hercules club, pepperwood, sea ash and southern prickly ash. It is a true Zanthoxylum, kin to Sichuan pepper and Japanese sansho. It is not the Californian tree Umbellularia californica, which is also called pepperwood. It is not Givaudan's Pepperwood™ either, which is a synthetic molecule. The scented parts are the crushed leaf and the broken bark. The leaf oil is mostly limonene (44 to 73%) and 1,8-cineole (16 to 43%). The bark oil is mostly sabinene (47%), limonene (19%) and terpinen-4-ol (13%). We found no supplier that sells an oil of this species for perfume, so the note is a plant reference.

Usage in Perfumery

Measured 2026-08-30: 18 perfume listings, filed with woods and mosses. Some brands may use the name for Givaudan's Pepperwood™ molecule, so the count is an upper bound. Use it where a citrus top has to sit on wood rather than on fruit, or where a peppery lift is wanted without black pepper's heat.