Paliurus spina-christi - Christ's Thorn

The Paliurus spina-christi is well known to surveyors of our Mediterranean scrublands. This deciduous bush is immediately recognizable in autumn and winter, with its slender branches slightly zigzagged and armed with formidable thorns, and covered with curious fruits, shaped like small flattened spinning tops or Andalusian hats of brown-pink color. Its other asset is a decorative flowering in clusters of chartreuse yellow in summer, on foliage of bright and shiny green. Its cultivation poses no problem in any type of well-drained soil, even poor, limestone and very dry in summer. It is often used to create highly effective defensive hedges in southern regions.

The crown of thorns bears this name because of a legend according to which the Paliurus spina-christi would have been used to make the crown of thorns of Christ. Native to southern Europe, western Asia and present up to Iran, this bush is spontaneous in the scrublands and limestone hills of Provence and Languedoc Roussillon. It extends northward to the Drôme. It is often found in barren and neglected places by other plants. This particularly undemanding and robust species is part of the Rhamnaceae family, it is a cousin of the buckthorn (Purgative Buckthorn), but also of the ceanothuses. It can withstand temperatures of around -12 to -15°C (10.4 to 5°F) at its peak.

This bush has a somewhat scruffy habit, it will reach an average height of 3m (10ft) with a spread of 1.50m (5ft), or even more in fertile soil. Its growth is moderately fast, about 20 to 30cm (8 to 12in) per year. Its quite thin branches, which meander and undulate, of dark brown colour, bear oval-shaped leaves and bright green colour, shiny on the top, from spring onwards. The small growths located at the base of the leaves, called stipules, transform into two spines of different appearance; one is straight and the other, shorter, is curved. They allow the plant to defend itself against herbivore teeth, but also to intertwine and climb into neighboring plants. The foliage takes on a beautiful yellow colour in autumn before falling.

Flowering takes place from June to August. Thin clusters of small yellow flowers with 5 petals develop at the axils of the leaves. The flowers, pollinated by bees, produce characteristic fruits, 2cm (1in) in diameter, dry and tough. They are formed by 3 fused stones surrounded by a pleated and undulated disc on the edge, with a papyraceous texture, changing from green to pale yellow and then to pinkish-brown.

The Paliurus spina-christi is naturally used in a defensive hedge or as a free hedge, but also in a large shrub bed. In a hedge, for example, combine it with a climbing shrub, Fremontodendron, laurel-tin, Publeurum fruticosum, evergreen ceanothuses, Teucrium fruticans, Phyllirea angustifolia.