Continent is scattered with Osage orange trees

A couple of weeks ago, a woman brought an unusual fruit to a master gardener function to ask me for its identification.

The fruit is round, green and orangelike with a bumpy surface that's about 3 to 5 inches in diameter. The next day, there was one on each lunch table as a decoration (or conversation piece) during the Georgia Master Gardeners Association Fall Conference at the Augusta Marriott Hotel & Suites. The fruit is called an Osage orange (Maclura pomifera).

Osage orange is a unique tree most often found in abandoned areas. It represents a long American story of planting, transport, use and survival in new locations.

A relatively fast-growing, stress-tolerant tree, it's almost unknown and unused, but it's readily found in many locations. Thornless male trees make tough shade and street trees.

When Osage orange was discovered by the early European settlers, it was carried across the continent. Because of its attributes, it was prized anywhere agriculture and grazing animals were found. It is considered to have escaped from cultivation and naturalized in many areas. Solitary trees or small family groups can be found on old home sites and along roadways.

Osage orange is actually a mulberry. It's known by a number of other common names, many representing specific uses: bodark, bowwood, fence shrub, hedge, hedge apple, hedge orange, horse-apple, mock orange, naranjo chino and postwood.

The historic uses or Osage orange followed the path of European settlement on this continent and the rise of traditional agriculture. The first uses recorded were from American Indians (the Osage tribe) in the Red River Valley of Oklahoma. The tribe used Osage orange for bows, tool handles and war clubs. Early trappers and frontiersmen recognized the tough, dense wood as ideal for their archery bows and handles.

The first planted uses were for animal corrals and field hedges. As a shrub, the dense growth, tough wood and the short, sharp thorns proved effective at controlling domestic grazing animals. Except in really bad drought years, animals would not graze the spiny, bitter tasting, tough twigs and foliage.

Osage orange is the densest and most decay-resistant wood in North America. The durable heartwood was used for wheel hubs, fence posts and railroad ties. The bark could be used for leather tanning and extracting (mainly from the root bark) a yellow tannin dye for clothes and baskets. The fruits and sap were used as a pesticide. The wood burned more like coal than other lighter woods.

One of the botanical mysteries is identifying the native growing range of Osage orange. The historic range is unclear because it was moved and planted extensively before detailed botanical surveys were conducted. It quickly escaped cultivation and started to reproduce and thrive in many places across the continent.

The commonly accepted native range is the three-state area of southwest Arkansas, southeast Oklahoma and northeast and east Texas. Ecologically, Osage orange grew in open, rich, bottomland forests around the Red River Valley of Oklahoma.

Today, Osage orange can be found naturalized in Georgia. It grows everywhere south of the Great Lakes and north of Florida, across eastern North America into the Great Plain states, almost to the Rocky Mountains. Other naturalized populations are found along Western settlement trails, forts, and settler locations in the Pacific Northwest.

Osage orange has been dragged across the country because of its uniqueness and utility. It has traveled widely and has been part of our history.

Sid Mullis is the Director of the University of Georgia Extension Service office in Richmond County. Call (706) 821-2349, or send e-mail to smullis@uga.edu.