I've been in hot pursuit of this plant since I first tasted its young leaves over a year ago. Nearly gave up until http://www.raintreenursery.com came to the rescue.
Kinome is the young leaf of Zanthoxylum piperitum, a species of prickly ash. It's the same plant that produces sichuan pepper. The leaves taste lemony fresh and produce a mild tongue-tingling sensation.
Although I bought it for its leaves, I'm curious to see it bloom and fruit. Hope I can stop myself from stripping it before that happens.
Playing with Fire and Water 
Have you bought 2 plants, male and female?
1 plant of sanshou (kinome) produces either male or female flowers only.
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also, I couldn’t find “kinome” in the raintree.com catalogue. Maybe you got lucky? Or maybe I missed it . . .
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sorry, I meant “raintreenursery.com”
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I’ve always likened it to an orange sorbet – it has such a creamy finish. It’s a shame that it loses all of its flavor when heat is applied.
I’m a cook currently making pasta in Seattle. I just hopped over to your Twitter account and I was just talking to my coworker about an egg yolk agnolotti / plin just yesterday!
I approach your blog from an academic standpoint and I love everything about it. Thanks for always surprising me!
~Herschell
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Oh neat! We just discovered kinome recently @ our Japanese market, never realized it was from the same plant as Sichuan peppers.
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They sell it under the name Japanese Pepper, aka Sansho. As mentioned above, you need both sexes, and raintree does NOT sell by sex. http://www.raintreenursery.com/catalog/productdetails.cfm?productid=L560
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