My Osage Orange Trees
To stay organized during seasonal transitions at my Bedford, New York farm, we always follow a schedule of tasks from one year to the next. This week, my outdoor grounds crew is busy wrapping the boxwood in protective burlap, cleaning up the garden beds, and pruning various trees. Fortunately, the weather has allowed us time to ready the property for the cold season ahead.
We just finished pruning the long row of Osage orange trees along the fence of one of my horse paddocks. 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, enjoy.
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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.
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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 two sides of my North Maple Paddock by the run-in shed and tennis court, I have a row of Osage orange trees. This is what some of them looked like in August, when they were full of leaves.
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- It 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 grow very fast. This photo was taken three years ago. The shoots from a single year can grow up to three to six feet long.
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- On this tree, one can see the many fruits. Each fruit is about four to five inches in diameter.
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- When mature, the Osage orange fruit, is filled with a sticky latex sap, which has been found to repel insects.
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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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- The leaves are glossy and green in the spring and summer, and then turn this bright yellow in autumn.
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- By late fall, many fruits drop to the ground. Although these fruits are not edible to humans, squirrels relish the small seeds buried inside the pulp.
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- 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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- Here are the trees now. We prune these trees yearly. Without pruning, Osage orange trees grow in dense unruly thickets as multi-stemmed shrubs.
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- Osage orange branches are armed with stout, straight spines. It is important to wear protective gloves whenever working with these trees.
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- There are hundreds of Osage orange trees along the fence. These were once two-foot tall saplings. It takes a couple of days to prune them all.
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- All the cut branches are piled up neatly for the chipper.
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- When pruning, Pasang cuts dead or diseased branches first. This is a dead, woody branch. Then, he prunes out competing leaders, retaining only one strong upright with evenly-spaced branches.
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- In comparison, here is a live branch – still quite green under the bark.
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- It is also good to cut branches that rub against each other or the trunk.
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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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- Although it is difficult to see, 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. Do you have Osage orange trees where you live? Let me know in the comments section – I love hearing from all of you!
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