A small deciduous aromatic shrub, or occasionally a small tree and having spiny branches ad yellowish flowers. The shrub ranges north from Québec to Nebraska, south to Virginia and west to Kansas and south to Louisiana and the peninsula of Florida. It is a small shrub forming clones by subterranean runners. Prickles occur in pairs at the nodes on the stem. There are few if any on the petioles. Flowers are solitary, or in axillary panicles rather than terminal and reaches a height of 15 to 25 feet, or 4.6 to 7.6 meters.

“One day, at the beginning of Lent at the Passion of Our Lord while resting herself near a thorn shrub, which she was filled with sorrow, because she had done nothing for Him. The fervour would take her to place some branches with thorns among her wood and on arriving at her lodge, which she had taken a handful of these thorns and placed them under the bark that served as her mat. When she went to sleep that evening, which she had taken out the thorns and spread them that she would have herself on them.”
- Father Claude Chauchetière