Osage Orange

[Alan D. Hyde]

http://www.redhill.org/images/tree_old.jpg

from www.redhill.org (http://www.redhill.org)

(Red Hill, the Patrick Henry National Memorial, is the last home and burial place of the orator of liberty and Virginia's first elected governor.)

Osage Orange Tree

Both a National Champion and a member of the American Forestry Hall of Fame, this Osage orange tree has an astonishing eighty-five foot span and stands sixty feet high. It is a striking feature of the grounds at Red Hill, which Patrick Henry referred to as "one of the garden spots of Virginia."

***

Alan

[gary porter]

Alan, thanks for the post and link. I've used a bit of Osage Orange for a wooden hand plane but never realized how big the tree could be, always thought it was some scrubby desert thing. Have you ever seen one in Indiana?
Thanks again.
Gary

[ 01-30-2003, 05:15 PM: Message edited by: gary porter ]

[Johannah]

Any idea of the age? There's an outside chance that this could be from seeds brought back by Lewis and Clark. Native Americans moved this species far from its original turf but it was not known in the East 'til the time of the Corps of Discovery.

[Rancocas]

Wow! I've seen that kind of tree around in different places, but never one anywhere near that big!
There a lot of Osage Orange on a friend's place in Kentucky. The wood makes good bows. (as in bow and arrows)

[Nicholas Carey]

Osage Orange is native to Arkansas, eastern Oklahoma and northern Texas, but it thrives in the river valleys of the midwest.

It's a great wood. They like it for fence posts in Southern Ohio -- it lasts for, well a long time. Sometimes the fence posts sprout.

[Wayne Jeffers]

Originally posted by Nicholas Carey:
. . . Sometimes the fence posts sprout.That's why you set the posts upside-down. Keeps 'em from sprouting. ;)

Around here, black locust is preferred for fence posts.

Wayne

[Tom Lathrop]

Osage orange was used for the ribs of the "Sultana" which is a reproduction of a ship built for the British by colonials in the 1700's on Chesapeake Bay. The timbers were large enough to cut curved ribs 6" by 6" from. They were harvested from field fence rows in Maryland. The large sharp thorns make a formidable barrier.

There are also osage orange trees on some of the outer banks in North Carolina. I don't think Meriweather Lewis planted them there.

[Tom Galyen]

Tom L.

We have lots of Osage Orange here in Illinois. However I have never seen one with "thorns". We call it Hedgeapple and it has very large green colored "apples" on it that are poisonous to eat. There is an urban legend that it you put one or two in your attic that it will keep mice and other rodents out as they do not like the smell.

I believe that the ribs for Sultana came from more than just one fence row. The very twisted character of the wood made it good for ship builders. You are correct about it being rot resistant.

Tom G.

[Tom Lathrop]

The land owners gave the shipbuilders permission to select and cut as many as they pleased. The trees were certainly cut from many different hedgerows.

I used an offcut from one of the ribs for a samson post on my power cruiser. Good stuff.

[Seth Wood]

Minor claim to fame: my uncle's brother is one of the people who provided osage orange to the Sultana crew.

Unfortunately I have not been able to parlay this into any Osage Orange for ME. I hear it's great wood but hard on tools.

[gary porter]

Wow!! if Hedgeapple is Osage Orange , well then I've seen lots of them in Indiana. I just never realized thats what it was. Thanks for the info, when I get back there I'll see if I can't aquire a bit of it.
Gary smile.gif

[jake]

Osage orange is a great wood,
its found all over the east now including upstate NY.

It is my wood of choice for making hard shooting hunting bows, and I think it would make a gorgeous ships wheel, and anything else you would want to, not entirely as tough as stainless steel
but sure prettier, the problem is finding it of any size, the tree pictured may be a one of a kind in the nation,

jake

[Kermit]

A lot of years back I built a springpole lathe and a sashsaw and used osage for the springy bits. (Pacific yew is right springy too.) My osage came from a brother-in-law's farm in Kansas, where everyone seemed to just call it "hedge." He had a lot if it along creek bottoms that was 6-8 inches in diameter at chest height.

[Boyd]

Osage orange is also the standard by which all other firewood is measured. It has the highest BTU per chord of any wood I know.

[winslow]

Kermit, you're right - hedgewood fence posts are all over western Kansas. I snatched one from my grandpa's farm before my dad sold the place.
HEAVY. HARD. At least 75yrs old (maybe closer to 100) and not a bit a rot above or below ground. I thought I might use a small piece for the handle of a bespoke rigger's knife.

-Markus

[Charlie J]

Ya'll talkin about Bois D'Arc here:) What the fellas out in the rural areas call Bowdark. I've seen some really nice lathe turnings using the stuff too. And I've got a hand made self bow done with it.

[paladin]

and I done got the largest and oldest known tree in the U.S. in the front yard in Webbers Falls Okla and it's a national landmark...it's also known as "The Hangin' tree".

[Alan D. Hyde]

Welcome back, Chuck.

Don't be a stranger.

Alan

[True Love]

Isn't it also known as "Bois 'd Arc" or as we say in Texas, "Bo-dark"?

There's quite a few of them in the Dallas area.

[Johannah]

Yup, and that's even close to its original range before people started moving it about because it was so useful. Indians moved it all over the Mississippi River Watershed and then Lewis and Clark introduced it, inadvertantly, to the east. Half the plant material they brought east went to William Hamilton in Philadelphia and was never heard of again. Half went to Jefferson in Virginia. Guess where the big tree that started this discussion is?

[Sam F]

A great wood... I made a mallet out of it and the thing took incredible abuse before it finally came apart. I wish I had more of that wood!

From the link:
"The tallest osage-orange stands at Red Hill, the home of Patrick Henry in Brookneal, Virginia. Both a National Champion and a member of the American Forestry Hall of Fame, this 400-year-old specimen has an eighty-five foot span and stands sixty feet high. "

If that age is right, Lewis and Clarke couldn't possibly have brought it back with them. Perhaps the original range of the tree needs to be reevaluated?

One interesting thing is that Osage Orange, along with other trees (like Black locust) seem to be adapted to a vanished world. The fruit is mostly non-edible, hard to open and not very effective at spreading the tree. It has been theorized that some large, now extinct, herbivore used to eat it and spread its seeds.
Locust is another tree with now inappropriate adaptations. Young specimens are quite thorny presumably to inhibit the feeding of some large plant eater, maybe giant sloths?

[Johannah]

Sam F., I think the paleo-botany work stands up fairly well. If that tree in Virginia is 400 years old, it could indicate that the Indians were moving the tree even farther than credited. Pecan and Catalpa were also distributed widely by this human action. We are as much a natural distribution system as any bear or bird. If you want the best germination rates for wild blueberry and huckleberry, the best way is to search for bear scat in berry season and collect seeds from the droppings. Some plants widely used medicinally were not moved so far but people came to the areas where they grew to be treated (Yaupon Holly). It's a bit hard to see Robinnia pseudoaccacia or its cousin Gleditsia triacanthos as maladapted given the pesty way they both spread! Thorny but useful nitrogen fixers.

[TomRobb]

Joannah, wouldn't it be a bit less... crappy to get the seeds directly from the berrys instead of picking them out of bear shit? Eliminate the wholesale guy :D

[Johannah]

Ah, but the plant evolved along with its "carrier" so cleaner seeds have reduced germination and vigor. This is akin to trees whose seeds sprout only after fire. Such seeds require treatment with concentrated sulfuric acid to mimic the effects of fire in breaking up the hard seed coat. One doozy has to sit in con. sulfuric for 24 hours. Try that with your pinky.

[Nicholas Carey]

Originally posted by Johannah:
Sam F., I think the paleo-botany work stands up fairly well. If that tree in Virginia is 400 years old, it could indicate that the Indians were moving the tree even farther than credited. Pecan and Catalpa were also distributed widely by this human action. We are as much a natural distribution system as any bear or bird.<topic_drift>

People often have this view of pre-contact North America as some wilderness garder untouched by the hand of Man with its native inhabitants as noble, innocent savages who trod lightly on the land.

Umm...not so.

The great plains are grasslands in no small part because they were intentionally and repeatedly burned over thousands of years in the course of hunting the buffalo.

This continent was shaped by the hand of man far more than most realize. The notion that the natives transported useful plants around is not surprising.

</topic_drift>

[Sam F]

Originally posted by Johannah:
Sam F., I think the paleo-botany work stands up fairly well. If that tree in Virginia is 400 years old, it could indicate that the Indians were moving the tree even farther than credited….
Yes, but Indian transmission ain't natural in the way the term is usually used. :D Of course Indians may have carried the seeds to VA or maybe it's a relic of an earlier population. VA has several pre-ice-age relict populations of other plants, so it's not out of the question. It may be impossible to prove either way. As I understand it, the Osage Oranges (and a lot of other plants) were pushed to their pre-European range by the ice ages. It was once more widespread but the animals it depended on to reestablish it's range are now gone. That's why it was so slow in spreading back into climate zones it was otherwise well adapted to. Black Locust, as you pointed out, is VERY successful at reproducing and well adapted in that way. The thing is that it still wastes valuable metabolic energy defending against an enemy that no longer exists. I suppose given the plants vigor we should be grateful it isn’t even more energetic! (We do still have sloths in VA but they are omnivores and tend to drive everywhere. Maybe that’s why they’re growing more gigantic all the time! :D )
North America is full of effects from the last ice age: from a lack of earthworms in the north to a weird species of fern that is perpetually stuck in the prothallus stage. Prothallia, being hardier than the sporophyte, survived the cold when the mature plants couldn’t handle it. Now the plant could be mistaken for a liverwort.
Another example I’ve read of is in animals… The Pronghorn antelope is supposedly a much faster runner than any current predator. Presumably their main predator (other than man) is gone now as well.

I find that dogwood seeds (Cornus florida) germinate much better if passed through a bird’s digestive system. Manually cleaned and planted the best germination rate we ever got was 10%. Judging by the volunteers popping up along fencerows the birds manage a much higher rate.

[ 03-04-2003, 02:58 PM: Message edited by: Sam F ]