Maintaining My Osage Orange Trees
We're getting so much pruning work done here at my Bedford, New York farm.
Here in the Northeast, winter weather can sometimes be very erratic - below freezing temperatures one day and mild the next. Whenever possible, my outdoor grounds crew takes advantage of the favorable conditions to get lots of tasks crossed off our list, including pruning the long rows of Osage orange trees along the fence of one of my horse paddocks. Last year, we limbed them up, meaning pruned the lower branches to improve shape and visibility. This year, the crew is tackling the tops to encourage fruitfulness and growth. The Osage orange, Macular pomifera, is more commonly known as a hedge apple, bow wood, or bodark. The fruit is wrinkly and bumpy in appearance, and considered inedible because of the texture and taste, but they're very interesting and fun to grow.
Here are some photos.
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- Have you ever seen an Osage orange? Despite its name, it is not related to oranges at all. It is actually a member of the fig family. Each fruit is about four to five inches in diameter. This photo was take in the fall, when the trees bear fruit.
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- The Osage orange is a dense cluster of hundreds of small fruits. Some say it resembles the many lobes of a brain.
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- Along three sides of my North Maple Paddock surrounding the run-in field and shed, not far from my tennis court, I have Osage orange trees. Here they are leafed out. Properly maintained, these trees make a lovely natural hedge and fence.
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- The leaves are three to five inches long and about three-inches wide. They are thick, firm, dark green and pale green. There is also a line down the center of each leaf, with lines forming upside-down V-shapes extending from the center line to the edge of the leaf.
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- Osage orange branches are armed with stout, straight spines growing from the leaf axils.
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- Here are the trees now. The Osage is a small deciduous tree or large shrub. During the mid 19th century, the sharp-thorned trees were often planted as cattle-deterring hedges before the introduction of barbed wire in the 1870s. Afterwards, the Osage orange trees became an important source of fence posts. The Osage orange is also known as a Bois D’arc, a name that was given by French settlers meaning “bow-wood”.
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- These trees must be pruned regularly to keep them in bounds – winter is the best time. Without pruning, Osage orange trees grow in dense unruly thickets as multi-stemmed shrubs.
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- And they grow very fast. The shoots from a single year can grow up to three to six feet long.
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- When pruning, Pasang cuts dead, damaged, or diseased branches first. Then he prunes out competing leaders, retaining only one strong upright with evenly-spaced branches. Here he is using a pole pruner – it has the cutting power of hand pruners but a reach of eight feet and more.
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- The pruner works with a rope attached to the pole allowing one to pull and cut from a distance. In general, when pruning always encourage branches to grow toward the outside of the tree and eliminate those that grow toward the center or cross other branches. Air and light need to penetrate the foliage to the center of the tree as much as possible.
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- Pasang also uses this telescoping pole pruner from STIHL. It has a quiet, zero-exhaust emission, and is very lightweight. Plus, with an adjustable shaft, the telescoping pole pruner can cut branches up to 16 feet above the ground.
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- For lower, thinner, easy-to-reach branches, Pasang uses his Okatsune hand pruners. Pruning shears, hand pruners, or secateurs are a type of scissor used on plants. They are strong enough to prune hard branches of trees and shrubs, sometimes up to an inch thick. Everyone on the crew has a pair.
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- And he also uses a STIHL pruning hand saw. A pruning saw makes it easier to cut branches and not harm them. It is also very important to make sure all these cutting tools are very sharp. Because of the thorny branches, it is important to wear protective glasses, long sleeves and thick gloves when working with these trees.
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- This is a dead, woody branch.
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- In comparison, here is a live branch – still quite green under the bark.
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- The wood of the Osage orange tree is extremely hard and durable. On older trunks the bark is orange-brown and furrowed. The heavy, close-grained yellow-orange wood is very dense and is prized for tool handles, treenails, and fence posts.
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- Here, one can see what has been pruned and what has not. Osage oranges should be grown in full sun on well-drained soil. This tough, native plant can withstand almost anything when established – heat, cold, wind, drought, poor soil, ice storms, and rot.
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- Regular and thorough pruning gives the branches more circulation and room to grow.
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- All the cut branches are piled up neatly for the chipper.
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- These Osage orange trees are now pruned and will look very pretty when the leaves return in spring. These trees can grow up to 60 feet tall. Pasang often stops to assess his work and see where the next cuts are needed.
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- The crew will be pruning these trees for a couple more days. There are hundreds of Osage orange trees along the fence. They are growing so well because of the time and work we put into them. It’s great to know all my trees are well maintained through the years.
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