Hedge Apples or Osage Oranges?

Growing up in southwestern Pennsylvania,

these wonderful green cranium-patterned orbs   

  were always a part of our fall displays.

My talented mother still uses them 

in wreaths and cornucopias,

in urns and bowls with other fresh

fall produce and foliage. Often times they

made it into our holiday decorations as well.

I love these little green balls!

They seem to get harder and harder 

to find as the years go by. 

At least in Illinois, it seems that old farms

are disappearing and being developed 

into neighborhood housing areas 

and the old "bodark" (or osage orange) 

 trees and hedges that they come from

are torn down and destroyed. 

You have to drive pretty far

out into the countryside 
to find them now.

The French first found it and called it the "Bois D'Arc" plant, now known as a Bodark.

There are many names 

for these inedible fruits,

to include osage oranges, 

 hedge apples, hedge balls, 

green brains, mock orange balls,

monkey balls, and horse apples.

They come from a small deciduous tree 

or large shrub that grows between 26-50 feet tall. 

They have a slightly orange citrus smell to them 

but they are not a part of the orange family, 

but are part of the mulberry family.

Their fruit's size ranges from 3 - 6" in diameter.

On my grandfather's farm,
there were hedge apples growing 

along some of the fence lines. 

My grandfather had told me 

they were planted there before 

he owned the farm --- before

 barbed wire fences were invented

 to keep the livestock 

on the property since they have dense

thorny branches and the animals 
stayed away from them.

Some believe they naturally 

ward off insects like spiders,

cockroaches, grasshoppers, fleas, 

crickets and other arthropods.

When you cut them open 

they have seeds inside and

 a milky latex liquid that's sticky. 

Nature's version of Elmer's Glue!

The bodark trees were originally found 

in the Osage-Red River valley 

extending between Oklahoma and northern Texas.

 But in the mid-1930's and 40's over

220 million hedges and trees 

were planted in 48 states for use 

as fencing and erosion prevention during the 

Franklin D. Roosevelt administration

as part of the WPA.

So there you go, 

a little history on this native American 

inedible but decorative fruit!

Do they grow in your area?

Do you love them too?

Sunlight hitting the still life this evening!