Is Osage Orange a good shade tree?

I am thinking of planting some osage orange trees. The strong wood seems like they would stand up to strong winds(hurricanes). I also like the look of them during the winter. It's almost a midevil look. My main concern is the fruit. If they all drop near the same time it would be no big deal, I could just go out and pick them up and dump them. However, if they drop over a long period of time it could be a nuisance. Any suggestions?

Well, this tree is native to my area. I does drop its fruit over a period of a couple of months, and those fruits draw nasty flies and bees BIG TIME! I wouldn't have one, but that's just me.

There are male selections, and thornless ones. One of the best IMHO is 'Whiteshield'.

We have mature male Osage-orange trees around our house and love them.

Guy S.

Oh why not go all out and choose a 'Cannonball'. Before you plant it, get one of these if you are planning on sitting outside underneath it in a lawn chair sipping lemonade-

http://www.outinstyle.com/Merchant2/graphics/00000001/helmet.jpg

Pick up a few for guests too ;)

All joking aside, I've wanted an osage orange for a while and I do want the Cannonball but might check into the Whiteshield Guy recommended.

I should have mentioned a couple of possible sources too, sorry:

Arborvillage Nursery, Holt, Missouri (near KC)
Contact: Lanny or Derrick Rawdon

Sunshine Nursery, Clinton, Oklahoma
Contact: Steve or Sherry Bieberich

Guy S.

We go out and gather the fruit to keep the bugs out of the house in the winter... we love the trees and have a few native ones growing around the place - how be it they are still small.

Guy, you don't by any chance have a source for a 'Cannonball' Osage Orange do you?

One of my old farmer neighbors stopped by last fall and gave me a bag full of the fruits to put in my house to discourage spiders. I am thinking about growing a few of them in my hedge row. Anyone know how fast these grow? Would these trees have simular invassive charactoristics as Mulberry?

Guy, I just reread the passage from your book about these trees, which incidently, includes the wonderful fall picture you posted above. Your commentary about the value of these trees in the landscape left me wondering if I should include many or any of them, as they might become more of a scrubby nuisance than a interesting and novel prize. What distance apart would you plant them and how many would you consider using in a hedgrow that straches 300' on one side and 230' on the other, forming an 'L'. Do they sucker much?

I had thought about just planting one tree that way it will not be able to "mate", but I read somewhere that if you have a female tree it can sometimes still produce fruit with no male tree around but the fruit will not contain any seeds. Is that true?

That was funny about the helmet. If people see me outside wearing one of those they may decide to put me in the nuthouse. They already think i'm crazy outside gardening in my robe! LOL

I am just blown away by the idea of using osage orange as a yard tree! I've never thought of it this way before, although I know of a century old beauty in Mt. Adams here in Cincinnati growing over a ravine. Very striking as an old tree.

Old dog/new tricks. You all have opened my eyes! I feel young again. Man, does it feel good to be alive! I want to dance!

Scott

It might be good if I explain that I had severe neck spasms yesterday, spent six hours in the emergency room, and am now marooned at the computer (on a nice day) while under the influence of vikadan (sp?) and some muscle relaxer.

Scott

I absolutely positively ADORE my Osage Orange trees - & I have quite a few of them all around the farm & in the yard.

They produce the very densest shade I've seen, & on the very hottest most humid day, enjoying a cool drink while lounging on my garden swing or hammock beneath them is a favorite treat.

Only the female trees produce the gnarly grapefruit-sized fruit, & we usually leave them where they fall because both the deer & squirrels LOVE them, & we enjoy watching them munch on them. In addition, the thickly corrugated bark is a magnet for warblers & woodpeckers, who work it over in their endless search for insects. Both male & female trees do have large thorns, which is why many Virginia settlers' hedgerows were planted with them to help make natural animal fencing. The iron-hard trunk wood was & is used for nearly indestructible fenceposts & slow-burning firewood, & the hard but flexible brances are used to make artisinal-quality bows for archery.

The only caveat I have is that once you've identified which of your trees are the fruit-producing females, simply don't park vehicles or anything breakable beneath them once the fruit matures.

In my youth I remember these trees growing in a pastured woodlot on our farm. we used the larger branches as fence posts, the wood being so hard it would bend a staple over if you could not find crack to drive it into. all these trees just "showed up", not planted, so spread by seeds from fruit. Also fruit not a deterrent to box elder bugs and as I remember better wear gloves because white juice from fruit like sap from pine and spruce trees.

Arborvillage has the "cannonball" variety for $15. They have a $50 minimum order to ship it where I live.

Wow, this thread sure grew in the past two days. Scott, I bet you'd be a LOT of fun on REAL drugs!

It does seem to be true that unfertilized females can bear fruit, although much smaller than those which have seeds.

Both ArborVillage and Sunshine sell 'Cannonball' and 'Whiteshield'. The former is a broadly spreading thornless female with 3-pound fruits, while the latter is an erect, elm-like thornless male. I selected 'Cannonball' from a spontaneous tree here, and Steve Bieberich (Sunshine Nursery) selected 'Whiteshield' from a tree found in Kansas, I think. For those of you in Europe, you can get (or soon will be able to get) 'Cannonball' from Pavia Nursery in Derrlijk, Belgium, and perhaps from Doering Nursery Near Kassel, Germany -- along with some of our oaks and other cultivar selections.

I'll post a photo showing (left to right) normal fruits, an apple, and 'Cannonball' fruits. They aren't for the faint of heart (or the unhelmeted gardener!), but they really make a conversation piece in the right place. Some of pur foreign tour guests are so impressed that they actually take fruits home with them in their luggage (wrapped carefully in plastic bags).

Guy S.

Sorry for the typo -- Pavia Nursery is in Deerlijk, not Derrlijk.
Guy S.

Patrick, for a traditional hedge row, they typically are planted a foot apart or less, sometimes in a double-staggered row. They are allowed to grow for a couple of years, then cut back near the base in winter so they will send out masses of thorny sucker shoots. Those shoots then are allowed to get perhaps 10 feet tall and are cut about half-way through at knee- or waist- height, and each one is carefully bent over at the cut to lay horizontally upon its neighbor (pleaching). The partial cut heals, and what you have is a hedge of woven horizontal limbs that send out shoots each year that can be trimmed to the desired height and width of hedge. But it's backbreaking work best left to a prison work-release crew or a teenager you really hate.

For a shelter belt, merely plant the trees at any specing desired and let them do their thing. The females will bear fruits, and the seeds will sprout, but they cannot travel far except downhill so the reproduction will always be easily controlled. The theory about this tree, which once grew throughout eastern North America, is that it was spread (vectored) by giant sloths and mastodonts that became extinct during the last Ice Age. Thus, it could not reclaim its former pre-glacial territory like other trees, until humans started planting it.

By the way, if you use thornless selections for a hedge, it obviously will be much easier to manage but much less effective as a barrier.

Just for those who might be curious, here is the ortet (original tree) of 'Cannonball'.

Guy S.

The ones we have here are the naturalized wild type & grow freely all over the Piedmont areas of Virginia. The fruits are definitely "cannonball" or grapefruit-sized, & are definitely heavy enough to cause damage. I have my trash cans beneath a female tree, & on windy days in late fall I'm sometimes tempted to wear a pith helmet to take out the trash - lol!! In fact, one day my husband was "bowling" them across the yard & down into one of our fields when one of them hit a bump, bounced up, & hit my truck, leaving a nice grapefruit-size dent. He didn't fess up until I came home one day ranting & raving that someone must have "hit & run" my truck in the market parking lot - lol!! Since then, no more bowling around the vehicles.

Quite a few online nurseries carry Osage Oranges, although I'm not sure if they carry specific varieities. I didn't even know there WERE specific varieties - lol!! I believe both Forest Farms & Musser Forests carry them, & both are listed here on Dave's Watchdog &, I believe, have good ratings.

Hedge apple bowling? sign me up! lol! What a great read this is!The hottest,most intense heat that has ever melted wood stoves around here was due to the mighty osage orange wood! lol!We have a bajillion hedge-apple trees in the pastures,creek-beds and Missouri river bluffs here that I wouldnt trade for a bajillion dollars! What a wonderful wildlife habitat it provides for us and we are trully blessed for it!I'm fairly new here and dont post much but I wanted to pop in for a sec and ask you guys about another cannonball tree(Couroupita guianensis) and if they are related? mebbe fifth cousins? lol! Thanks......Dave

Not related, but just as deadly when they land on you! The only reassurance is that most of the Couroupita fruits grow directly on the trunk, not high in the branches, so they don't build up as much momentum when they fall!

Guy S.

Thanks Guy, I am going to start some this spring. I am not sure about the pleating technigue but if it would keep the deer to out, I would gladly suffer the tedious work. How fast can I expect these seedlings to grow. Do I have to protect them from rabbits, deer, etc?

Great thread...

Initial protection is needed if you have a wildlife problem. Once they get going (if you use the thorny ones) they're impervious even to a Sherman tank.

The pleaching is simple really. Start at the left end of the row -- cut a stem half-way (no more) through on the right side about waist height or a little lower, and bend it left at the cut in a 90-degree angle; then cut the next one to your right the same way, and bend it down over the first one; keep going down the row like that. When the cuts heal that next growing season, you'll have a row of horizontal stems that will form the matrix of your hedge. Then let sprouts grow up from that to about 8 feet or so to keep deer out, and keep trimming the tops back to that height each year.

Some lazy farmers used to just cut the stems off and let them sprout, then whack them back again annually. You can even do that with one of the articulated boom-mounted brush mowers that orchardists use to trim the tops of their fruit trees (and tasteless rural road commissioners and utility clearance crews use to trim rights of way).

Guy S.

Guy, I am a fool for projects that require tedious pruning and annual maintenance. Plus, oddly enough, I imagine that inspite of all the pruning, the hedge will still have a natural unkempt appearance, LOL. I'm going to give this a try, but I may need to get some more fruit! Sounds like it would make an interesting hedge that would help keep my dogs off the road and the deer out. In a few years when I start the pleating, I guess I'll be changing my handle to 'bloody fingers' :)

Guy, do these trees require any special pruning to get them to look like the ones in your pictures? Those look perfect!

I would say no, as far as any special pruning goes, because all of mine look like that pic too, & apart from removing dead or wayward branches & the many suckers that sprout from the trunk, I've done nothing special.

Breezy is right, although some naturally have nicer form than others. For each really nice one I've found and tweaked into shape, I've seen dozens that were rowdy and ratty looking. They vary tremendously.

Since they hold their old, dead lower branches, you will need to do some deadwooding first, and occasional watersprouts need to be dealt with periodically on some trees. That's about it -- let the tree grow the way it wants to grow, with nothing more than gentle nudges here and there to perfect it. IMHO, that's the best way to treat just about any tree species.

Patrick, if you're such a sucker for taking on hard work, come and visit this spring during the March digging season in our nursery!
;-)

Guy S.

Well I went ahead and done it. I ordered a "Whiteshield" and a "Cannonball" from ArborVillage. Hopefully both of them will grow well here. I'm going to have to put the Cannonball in a place where it can't do any damage. LOL

I have some seedlings I grew from seed, that someone in the mid-south gave me.

Can anyone tell me if they'd thrive in the Pacific NW? Do they like nearly endless year-round rain except a dry August? Well, in a few years I'll be able to say whether Maclura pomifera likes it here, depending on how my seedlings fare. We'll see...

Hi U/C Owl,

They should be OK tho' perhaps slowish in the PNW; they grow OK but slow in southern England, which has a very similar climate to e.g. Vancouver, and you'll have more summer heat than that. You may not be able to rely on it ripening fruit fully though.

Up where I am at 55°N I'd suspect it's a non-starter, though - never seen or heard of any growing around here.

Resin