Osage Orange Fruit

The female flower in ripening becomes very fleshy, forming a large multiple fruit or syncarp composed of 1-seeded drupelets. The fruit ripens from September through October. The ripe fruit, 7.6 to 15 cm (3 to 6 in) in diameter, yellowish-green, resembles an orange, often weighing more than a kilogram (2.2 lb). When bruised, the fruit exudes a bitter milky juice which may cause a skin rash and which will blacken the fruit on drying. Female trees often produce abundant fruit when no male trees exist nearby, but such fruit contains no seeds. [1]

Osage-orange produces no sawtimber, pulpwood, or utility poles, but it has been planted in greater numbers than almost any other tree species in North America. Known also as hedge, hedge-apple, bodark, bois-d'arc, bowwood, and naranjo chino, it made agricultural settlement of the prairies possible (though not profitable), led directly to the invention of barbed wire, and then provided most of the posts for the wire that fenced the West. The heartwood, bark, and roots contain many extractives of actual and potential value in food processing, pesticide manufacturing, and dye making. Osage-orange is used in landscape design, being picturesque rather than beautiful, and possessing strong form, texture, and character.

The natural range of Osage-orange is in the Red River drainage of Oklahoma, Texas, and Arkansas; and in the Blackland Prairies, Post Oak Savannas, and Chisos Mountains of Texas. According to some authors the original range included most of eastern Oklahoma, portions of Missouri, and perhaps northwestern Louisiana. Osage-orange has been planted as a hedge in all the 48 contiguous States and in southeastern Canada. The commercial range includes most of the country east of the Rocky Mountains, south of the Platte River and the Great Lakes, excluding the Appalachian Mountains.