Abstract: Zanthoxylum armatum has the value of both medicine and food, and has great industrial value. This paper revealed the reasons why the Z. armatum industry had developed from scratch and showed a blowout development in the past 20 years, reflecting the current research hotspots of the Z. armatum industry, and predicting the future development trends of the Z. armatum industry. Statistical analysis was made on 1042 Chinese literatures on "Green and Chinese prickly ash" published in CNKI database from 1990 to 2021, and the academic literatures were visually analyzed by CiteSpace software. The results showed that: (1) The research on Z. armatum originated 30 years ago. Before 2003, there were few studies on Z. armatum, with no more than 5 papers published. From 2003 to 2007, there was an explosive increase in the research of Z. armatum, and the number of articles published reached a small peak of 81 in 2007. From 2015 to 2019, studies on Z. armatum showed a trend of slight decline at first and then an upward trend, reaching a peak of 115 in 2019, and the number of published papers maintained at more than 70 thereafter. The overall publishing trend of Z. armatum was on the rise. (2) The research level of Z. armatum was mainly applied research, and the basic research was relatively weak. The research level of Z. armatum in the middle and lower reaches of the industrial chain was higher than other fields. (3) The hot research field of Z. armatum was food, and the future development trend of food processing innovation ability, focusing on the diversified development of Z. armatum. As a new industry, the Z. armatum industry has a huge development prospects, and the innovation in the food processing will become the key to the development of the industry.