Osage orange
Maclura pomifera
also called hedge apple, bois d'arc, bodark, horse apple
The hedge tree that fenced the prairies before barbed wire: thorned, indestructible, glossy-leaved, and famous for the softball-size chartreuse "hedge apples" that thud down every October.
- Type
- Tree · Perennial
- Botanical family
- Mixed / other
- Foliage color
- Green
- Flower color
- Green
- Sunlight
- Full sun
- Watering
- Low; it grows where nothing is watered and nothing else volunteers
- Soil
- Absolutely any: clay, drought, wind, heat, neglect
- Feeding
- Gentle all-organic
- USDA zones
- 4a–9a
- Frost tolerant
- Yes
- Plant out
- 14 days before the last spring frost
- Plant spacing
- 29 ft 6 in
- In-row spacing
- 23 ft
- Between rows
- 36 ft 1 in
- Square-foot density
- Not suited to SFG
- Root system
- Woody, with a taproot it keeps
- Working depth
- 24 in–5 ft
- Can reach
- 10 ft down where the soil allows
- Spread
- 59–98 ft across, about 1.5–2.5× the width of the plant
It anchors downwards as well as sideways, which is what lets it stand in a gale and what makes it hate being moved. Plant it small: past a few years in the ground a taprooted tree transplants badly, and often not at all.
The habit is Osage orange’s own; the figures are what that habit usually comes to at this size, not a measurement of this species. Roots follow the soil either way: a compacted pan, a high water table or heavy clay stops them well short of any of it, and deep open ground lets them go further.
- When
- The hedge apples drop through October; gathering them is groundskeeping more than harvest.
- What to look for
- Chartreuse spheres on the ground, and more coming; stand out from under the tree on a windy day, since a kilo of fruit falls from ten meters.
- How to harvest
- Rake or barrow them up before the mower finds them. They are not edible (spit-out bitter, though squirrels shred them for seeds); people set them on porch steps and in cellars as folk spider repellent, which costs nothing to indulge.
- How often
- Weekly through the drop under a female tree; never under a male cultivar.
- Storing the crop
- A hedge apple keeps its looks for a couple of months somewhere cool. The tree itself needs nothing, though a hedge takes to hard cutting like nothing else alive.
- Generally trouble-free No notable pest or disease problems when grown in the right conditions — one of the easy ones.
The wood is the densest and most rot-proof in North America (Osage bows, fence posts that outlast the farm), and the fruit evolved for mammoths that never came back. Plant the thornless, fruitless male 'White Shield' unless the thudding is the point.
The Cottage Garden Companion — the gardener's herbarium at cottagegardencompanion.com