Maclura pomifera: Osage-orange has freaky bumpy green fruit
My kids and I were exploring at the huge sandy beach across from takeout at Huguenot Flatwater when we discovered the freakiest and coolest lime green, hard, bumpy fruits under a thorny hardwood tree. The trees have very thorny branches and the fruit was about the same size as a tennis ball (same color too). From the […]
My kids and I were exploring at the huge sandy beach across from takeout at Huguenot Flatwater when we discovered the freakiest and coolest lime green, hard, bumpy fruits under a thorny hardwood tree.
The trees have very thorny branches and the fruit was about the same size as a tennis ball (same color too).
From the wikipedia page:
Maclura pomifera, commonly called Osage-orange, hedge-apple, Horse-apple, Bois D’Arc, or Bodark, is a small deciduous tree or large shrub, typically growing to 8–15 metres (26–49 ft) 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.
Fruit: Pale green globe, 4–5 inches (10–13 cm) 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.
The Osage-orange tree produced highly-valued wood for making bows by Native Americans.
That last part – floats — is what intrigues me. It is easy to find plants along the banks of rivers that seem out of place. The Osage-orange three that I found was rooted in the sandy banks of a spit of land that is often underwater. Since the James was at about 3.8 feet today, there was plenty of shoreline uncovered. It is likely the seeds washed down the river at some point and settled in the sand and grew from there.
-
Recommend this
on Facebook -
Report an error
-
Subscribe to our
Weekly Digest
This article has been closed to further comments.