Difference between revisions of "Osage-orange"

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{{Taxobox
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{{SPlantbox
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| color = lightgreen
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|familia=Moraceae
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| name = Osage-orange
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|genus=Maclura
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| image = Maclura pomifera2.jpg
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|species=pomifera
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| image_width = 250px
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|common_name=Osage-orange, Horse-apple, Bois D'Arc, Bodark
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| image_caption = Osage-orange foliage and fruit
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|habit=tree
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| regnum = [[Plant]]ae
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|Min ht box=8
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| divisio = [[Flowering plant|Magnoliophyta]]
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|Min ht metric=m
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| classis = [[Magnoliopsida]]
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|Max ht box=15
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| ordo = [[Rosales]]
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|Max ht metric=m
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| familia = [[Moraceae]]
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|lifespan=perennial
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| genus = ''Maclura''
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|Temp Metric=°F
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| species = '''''M. pomifera'''''
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|jumpin=This is the plant information box - for information on light; water; zones; height; etc. If it is mostly empty you can help grow this page by clicking on the edit tab and filling in the blanks!
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| binomial = ''Maclura pomifera''
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|image=Maclura pomifera2.jpg
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| binomial_authority = ([[Constantine Samuel Rafinesque|Raf.]]) Schneid.
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|image_width=200
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|image_caption=Osage-orange foliage and fruit
 
}}
 
}}
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'''Osage-orange''', '''Horse-apple''', '''Bois D'Arc''', or '''Bodark''' ('''''Maclura pomifera''''') is a small [[deciduous]] [[tree]] or large [[shrub]], typically growing to {{convert|8|-|15|m|ft}} tall. It is [[Plant sexuality|dioeceous]], with male and female [[flower]]s on different plants. The [[fruit]], a [[multiple fruit]], is roughly spherical, but bumpy, and 7–15&nbsp;cm in diameter, and it is filled with a sticky white [[latex]] [[sap]]. In fall, its color turns a bright yellow-green and it has a faint odor similar to that of [[orange (fruit)|oranges]].<ref>Mabberley, D.J. 1987. ''The Plant Book. A portable dictionary of the higher plants''. [[Cambridge University Press]], Cambridge. 706 p. ISBN 0-521-34060-8.</ref>
  
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The '''Osage-orange''' (''Maclura pomifera'') is a [[plant]] in the [[mulberry]] family [[Moraceae]]. It is also known as '''Osage-apple''', '''mock orange''', '''hedge-apple''', '''horse-apple''', '''hedge ball''', '''bois d'arc''', '''bodark''' (mainly in [[Oklahoma]] and [[Texas]]), and '''bow wood'''. Common slang terms for it include '''monkey brain''', '''monkey ball''', '''monkey orange''', and '''brain fruit''' due to its brainlike appearance.
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''Maclura'' is closely related to the genus ''[[Cudrania]]'', and hybrids between the two genera have been produced. In fact, some botanists recognize a more broadly defined ''Maclura'' that includes species previously included in ''Cudrania'' and other genera of Moraceae.
  
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The species is [[Plant sexuality|dioeceous]], with male and female [[flower]]s on different plants. It is a small [[deciduous]] [[tree]] or large [[shrub]], typically growing to 8-15 m tall. The [[fruit]], a ''syncarp'' of [[achene]]s, is roughly spherical, but bumpy, and 7-15 cm in diameter, and it is filled with a sticky white [[Latex (rubber)|latex]] sap. In fall, its color turns a bright yellow-green and it has a faint odor similar to that of [[orange (fruit)|oranges]].<ref>Mabberley, D.J. 1987. ''The Plant Book. A portable dictionary of the higher plants''. [[Cambridge University Press]], Cambridge. 706 p. ISBN 0-521-34060-8.</ref>
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The trees range from {{convert|40|-|60|ft|m}} high with short trunk and round-topped head. The juice is milky and acrid. The roots are thick, fleshy, covered with bright orange bark.
  
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''Maclura pomifera'' is the sole surviving member of the genus ''Maclura''—of its many relatives from past geologic eras, only fossils remain. It is also, however, a member of the family ''Moraceae'', which encompasses the [[Mulberry|mulberries]] and the [[Ficus|figs]], as well as a large number of tropical and semitropical trees. <ref>Dave Wayman, [http://www.motherearthnews.com/Organic-Gardening/1985-03-01/All-About-the-Osage-Orange.aspx "All About the Osage Orange"] [[Mother Earth News]] (March/April 1985)</ref>
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The leaves are arranged alternately on a slender growing shoot {{convert|3|-|4|ft|m}} long, varying from dark to pale tender green.  In form they are very simple, a long oval terminating in a slender point.  In the axil of every growing leaf is found a growing spine which when mature is about {{convert|1|in|cm}} long, and rather formidable.  The pistillate and staminate flowers are on different trees; both are inconspicuous; but the fruit is very much in evidence.  This in size and general appearance resembles a large, yellow green orange; only its surface is roughened and tuberculated. It is, in fact, a compound fruit such as botanists call a [[syncarp]], where the [[carpel]]s (that is, the ovaries) have grown together and that the great orange-like ball is not one fruit but many.  It is heavily charged with milky juice which oozes out at the slightest wounding of the surface. Although the flowering is diœcious, the pistillate tree even when isolated will bear large oranges, perfect to the sight but lacking the seeds.
  
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The fruits have a pleasant and mild odor, but are inedible for the most part. Although not strongly poisonous, eating it may cause vomiting. The fruits are sometimes torn apart by [[squirrels]] to get at the seeds, but few other native animals make use of it as a food source. This is unusual, as most large fleshy fruits serve the function of [[seed|seed dispersal]], accomplished by their consumption by large animals. One recent [[hypothesis]] is that the Osage-orange fruit was eaten by a giant [[ground sloth]] that became [[extinct]] shortly after the first human settlement of North America. Other extinct [[Pleistocene megafauna]], like the [[mammoth]], [[mastodon]] and [[gomphothere]] may have fed on the fruit and aided in seed dispersal.<ref>Connie Barlow. Anachronistic Fruits and the Ghosts Who Haunt Them. ''[[Arnoldia]]'', vol. 61, no. 2 (2001)</ref> An [[equine]] species that went extinct at the same time also has been suggested as the plant's original dispersal mechanism because modern horses and other livestock will sometimes eat the fruit.<ref>Connie Barlow and Paul Martin, 2002. ''The Ghosts of Evolution: Nonsensical Fruit, Missing Partners, and Other Ecological Anachronisms'', which covers the now-extinct large herbivores with which fruits like Osage-orange and [[Avocado]] co-evolved in the Western Hemisphere.</ref>
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*Bark: Dark, deeply furrowed, scaly.  Branchlets at first bright green, pubescent, during first winter they become light brown tinged with orange, later they become a paler orange brown.  Branches with yellow pith, and armed with stout, straight, axillary spines.
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*Wood: Bright orange yellow, sapwood paler yellow; heavy, hard, strong, flexible, capable of receiving a fine polish, very durable in contact with the ground.  It has a specific gravity of 0.7736 and {{convert|1|ft3|m3}} of the wood has a weight of {{convert|48.21|lb|abbr=on}}.
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*Winter buds: All buds lateral.  Depressed-globular, partly immersed in the bark, pale chestnut brown.
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*Leaves: Alternate, simple, {{convert|3|-|5|in|cm}} long, {{convert|2|-|3|in|cm}} wide, ovate to oblong-lanceolate, entire, acuminate, or acute or cuspidate, rounded, wedge-shaped or subcordate at base.  Feather-veined, midrib prominent.  They come out of the bud involute, pale bright green, pubescent and tomentose, when full grown are thick, firm, dark green, shining above, paler green below.  In autumn they turn a clear bright yellow.  Petioles slender, pubescent, slightly grooved.  Stipules small, caducous.
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*Flowers: June, when leaves are full grown; diœcious. Staminate flowers in racemes, borne on long, slender, drooping peduncles developed from the axils of crowded leaves on the spur-like branchlets of the previous year.  Racemes are short or long.  Flowers pale green, small.  Calyx hairy, four-lobed. Stamens four, inserted opposite lobes of calyx, on the margin of thin disk; filaments flattened, exserted; anthers oblong, introrse, two-celled; cells opening longitudinally; ovary wanting.  Pistillate flowers borne in a dense globose many-flowered head which appears on a short stout peduncle, axillary on shoots of the year. Calyx, hairy, four-lobed; lobes thick, concave, investing the ovary, and inclosing the fruit. Ovary superior, ovate, compressed, green, crowned by a long slender style covered with white stigmatic hairs. Ovule solitary.
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*Fruit: Pale green globe, {{convert|4|-|5|in|cm}} in diameter, made up of numerous small [[drupe]]s, crowded and grown together. These small drupes are oblong, compressed, rounded, often notched at the apex.  They are filled with milky, latex-based juice.  The seeds are oblong.  The fruit is often seedless, and floats.<ref name=Keeler>{{cite book
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  | last =Keeler
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  | first =Harriet L.
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  | title =Our Native Trees and How to Identify Them
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  | publisher =Charles Scriber's Sons
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  | date =1900
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  | location =New York
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  | pages =186–189 }}</ref>
  
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{{Inc|
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Maclura pomifera, Schneid. (M. aurantiaca, Nutt. Toxylon pomiferum, Raf.). Tree, sometimes to 60 ft., with furrowed dark orange-colored bark: branchlets light green, soon glabrous: spines 2-3 in. long: lvs. ovate to oblong-lanceolate, acuminate, soon becoming glabrous, lustrous above, 2-6 in. long: racemes of staminate fls. 1-1 ½  in. long; heads of pistillate fls. ¾ -l in. across: fr. subglobose, 4-6 in. across, ripening in autumn and soon falling. May, June. Ark. to Texas. Var. inermis, Rehd. (M. aurantiaca var. inermis, Andre). A form with spineless branches.
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}}
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==Cultivation==
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It is native to a deep and fertile soil but it has great powers of adaptation and is hardy over most of the contiguous United States, where it is extensively used as a hedge plant.  It needs severe pruning to keep it in bounds and the shoots of a single year will grow {{convert|3|-|6|ft|m}} long.  A neglected hedge will soon become fruit-bearing.  It is remarkably free from insect enemies and fungal diseases.<ref name=Keeler />  A thornless male cultivar of the species exists and is vegetatively reproduced for ornamental use.<ref name=USDA/>
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===Propagation===
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===Pests and diseases===
  
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==History==
 
  
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The plant is native to an area in the central [[United States]] consisting of parts of [[Kansas]], [[Missouri]], [[Arkansas]], southeastern [[Oklahoma]], a narrow belt in eastern [[Texas]], and the extreme northwest corner of [[Louisiana]], but was not common anywhere. It was a curiosity when [[Meriwether Lewis]] sent some slips and cuttings to [[Thomas Jefferson|President Jefferson]] in March [[1804]]. The samples, donated by "Mr. [[Peter Choteau]], who resided the greater portion of his time for many years with the [[Osage Nation]] according to Lewis' letter, didn't take, but later the thorny Osage-orange was widely naturalized th
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==Varieties==
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roughout the U.S.<ref>''[[Smithsonian (magazine)|Smithsonian]]'' March 2004, p. 35.</ref>
 
  
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The trees picked up the name ''bois d'arc'', or "bow-wood", because early [[France|French]] settlers observed the wood being used for bow-making by [[Native Americans in the United States|Native Americans]]. The people of the [[Osage Nation]] "esteem the wood of this tree for the making of their bows, that they travel many hundred miles in quest of it," [[Meriwether Lewis]] was told in 1804.
 
  
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==Uses==
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==Gallery==
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[[Image:Osage_orange_1.jpg|right|244px||thumb|left|Osage-orange fruit]] The sharp-thorned trees were planted as cattle-deterring hedges before the introduction of [[barbed wire]].  The heavy, closely grained yellow-orange wood is very dense and is prized for tool handles, [[tree]] nails, fence posts, [[electrical insulators]], and other applications requiring a strong dimensionally-stable wood that withstands rot. Straight-grained osage timber (most is knotty and twisted) makes very good bows. In Arkansas, in the early 19th century, a good osage bow was worth a horse and a blanket. Additionally, a yellow-orange [[dye]] can be extracted from the wood, which can be used as a substitute for [[fustic]] and [[aniline]] dyes. When dried, the wood also makes excellent fire wood that burns long and hot.
 
  
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Today, the fruit is sometimes used to deter spiders, cockroaches, [[boxelder bug]]s, crickets, fleas, and other insects. Using the fruit in this fashion, at least for spiders, has been debunked.[http://www.washington.edu/burkemuseum/spidermyth/myths/skineggs.html#hedgeapple] However, hedge apple ''oil'' has been shown to effectively repel cockroaches (University of Iowa, 2004), and the fruit may indeed have an effect of repelling cockroaches and boxelder bugs.
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<gallery perrow=5>
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Image:Upload.png| photo 1
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Image:Upload.png| photo 2
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Image:Upload.png| photo 3
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</gallery>
  
 
==References==
 
==References==
 
<references/>
 
<references/>
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*[[Standard Cyclopedia of Horticulture]], by L. H. Bailey, MacMillan Co., 1963
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<!--- xxxxx  *Flora: The Gardener's Bible, by Sean Hogan. Global Book Publishing, 2003. ISBN 0881925381  -->
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<!--- xxxxx  *American Horticultural Society: A-Z Encyclopedia of Garden Plants, by Christopher Brickell, Judith D. Zuk. 1996. ISBN 0789419432  -->
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<!--- xxxxx  *Sunset National Garden Book. Sunset Books, Inc., 1997. ISBN 0376038608  -->
  
 
==External links==
 
==External links==
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*[http://www.na.fs.fed.us/spfo/pubs/silvics_manual/volume_2/maclura/pomifera.htm Osage-orange factsheet] from the [[United States Forest Service]]
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*{{wplink}}
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*[http://www.ipm.iastate.edu/ipm/hortnews/1997/10-10-1997/hedgeapple.html Facts and Myths Associated with "Hedge Apples"] from an [[Iowa State University]] website
 
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*[http://www.cas.vanderbilt.edu/bioimages/species/frame/mapo.htm ''Maclura pomifera'' images at bioimages.vanderbilt.edu]
 
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*[http://www.thegreatstory.org/anachronistic_fruits/index.html ''Anachronistic fruits'']
 
  
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[[Category:Moraceae]]
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{{stub}}
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__NOTOC__

Latest revision as of 22:31, 22 December 2009


Osage-orange foliage and fruit


Plant Characteristics
Habit   tree

Height: ⇕ 8 m"m" can not be assigned to a declared number type with value 8. to 15 m"m" can not be assigned to a declared number type with value 15.
Lifespan: ⌛ perennial
Cultivation
Scientific Names

Moraceae >

Maclura >

pomifera >


This is the plant information box - for information on light; water; zones; height; etc. If it is mostly empty you can help grow this page by clicking on the edit tab and filling in the blanks!"This is the plant information box - for information on light; water; zones; height; etc. If it is mostly empty you can help grow this page by clicking on the edit tab and filling in the blanks!" is not in the list (If this plant info box on watering; zones; height; etc. is mostly empty you can click on the edit tab and fill in the blanks!) of allowed values for the "Jump in" property.


Osage-orange, Horse-apple, Bois D'Arc, or Bodark (Maclura pomifera) is a small deciduous tree or large shrub, typically growing to 8 - 15 m tall. It is dioeceous, with male and female flowers on different plants. The fruit, a multiple fruit, is roughly spherical, but bumpy, and 7–15 cm in diameter, and it is filled with a sticky white latex sap. In fall, its color turns a bright yellow-green and it has a faint odor similar to that of oranges.[1]

Maclura is closely related to the genus Cudrania, and hybrids between the two genera have been produced. In fact, some botanists recognize a more broadly defined Maclura that includes species previously included in Cudrania and other genera of Moraceae.

The trees range from 40 - 60 ft high with short trunk and round-topped head. The juice is milky and acrid. The roots are thick, fleshy, covered with bright orange bark.

The leaves are arranged alternately on a slender growing shoot 3 - 4 ft long, varying from dark to pale tender green. In form they are very simple, a long oval terminating in a slender point. In the axil of every growing leaf is found a growing spine which when mature is about 1 in cm long, and rather formidable. The pistillate and staminate flowers are on different trees; both are inconspicuous; but the fruit is very much in evidence. This in size and general appearance resembles a large, yellow green orange; only its surface is roughened and tuberculated. It is, in fact, a compound fruit such as botanists call a syncarp, where the carpels (that is, the ovaries) have grown together and that the great orange-like ball is not one fruit but many. It is heavily charged with milky juice which oozes out at the slightest wounding of the surface. Although the flowering is diœcious, the pistillate tree even when isolated will bear large oranges, perfect to the sight but lacking the seeds.

  • Bark: Dark, deeply furrowed, scaly. Branchlets at first bright green, pubescent, during first winter they become light brown tinged with orange, later they become a paler orange brown. Branches with yellow pith, and armed with stout, straight, axillary spines.
  • Wood: Bright orange yellow, sapwood paler yellow; heavy, hard, strong, flexible, capable of receiving a fine polish, very durable in contact with the ground. It has a specific gravity of 0.7736 and 1 ft3 m3 of the wood has a weight of 48.21 lb .
  • Winter buds: All buds lateral. Depressed-globular, partly immersed in the bark, pale chestnut brown.
  • Leaves: Alternate, simple, 3 - 5 in long, 2 - 3 in wide, ovate to oblong-lanceolate, entire, acuminate, or acute or cuspidate, rounded, wedge-shaped or subcordate at base. Feather-veined, midrib prominent. They come out of the bud involute, pale bright green, pubescent and tomentose, when full grown are thick, firm, dark green, shining above, paler green below. In autumn they turn a clear bright yellow. Petioles slender, pubescent, slightly grooved. Stipules small, caducous.
  • Flowers: June, when leaves are full grown; diœcious. Staminate flowers in racemes, borne on long, slender, drooping peduncles developed from the axils of crowded leaves on the spur-like branchlets of the previous year. Racemes are short or long. Flowers pale green, small. Calyx hairy, four-lobed. Stamens four, inserted opposite lobes of calyx, on the margin of thin disk; filaments flattened, exserted; anthers oblong, introrse, two-celled; cells opening longitudinally; ovary wanting. Pistillate flowers borne in a dense globose many-flowered head which appears on a short stout peduncle, axillary on shoots of the year. Calyx, hairy, four-lobed; lobes thick, concave, investing the ovary, and inclosing the fruit. Ovary superior, ovate, compressed, green, crowned by a long slender style covered with white stigmatic hairs. Ovule solitary.
  • Fruit: Pale green globe, 4 - 5 in in diameter, made up of numerous small drupes, crowded and grown together. These small drupes are oblong, compressed, rounded, often notched at the apex. They are filled with milky, latex-based juice. The seeds are oblong. The fruit is often seedless, and floats.[2]


Read about Osage-orange in the Standard Cyclopedia of Horticulture 

Maclura pomifera, Schneid. (M. aurantiaca, Nutt. Toxylon pomiferum, Raf.). Tree, sometimes to 60 ft., with furrowed dark orange-colored bark: branchlets light green, soon glabrous: spines 2-3 in. long: lvs. ovate to oblong-lanceolate, acuminate, soon becoming glabrous, lustrous above, 2-6 in. long: racemes of staminate fls. 1-1 ½ in. long; heads of pistillate fls. ¾ -l in. across: fr. subglobose, 4-6 in. across, ripening in autumn and soon falling. May, June. Ark. to Texas. Var. inermis, Rehd. (M. aurantiaca var. inermis, Andre). A form with spineless branches.


The above text is from the Standard Cyclopedia of Horticulture. It may be out of date, but still contains valuable and interesting information which can be incorporated into the remainder of the article. Click on "Collapse" in the header to hide this text.


Cultivation

It is native to a deep and fertile soil but it has great powers of adaptation and is hardy over most of the contiguous United States, where it is extensively used as a hedge plant. It needs severe pruning to keep it in bounds and the shoots of a single year will grow 3 - 6 ft long. A neglected hedge will soon become fruit-bearing. It is remarkably free from insect enemies and fungal diseases.[2] A thornless male cultivar of the species exists and is vegetatively reproduced for ornamental use.[3]

Propagation

Pests and diseases

Varieties

Gallery

  • photo 1

  • photo 2

  • photo 3

References

  1. ↑ Mabberley, D.J. 1987. The Plant Book. A portable dictionary of the higher plants. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. 706 p. ISBN 0-521-34060-8.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Keeler, Harriet L. (1900). Our Native Trees and How to Identify Them. New York: Charles Scriber's Sons. pp. 186–189. 
  3. ↑ Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; no text was provided for refs named USDA

External links


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