Giant Maclura pomifera

This tree is much bigger than these pictures would indicate.

Scott

It is, shall we say, a sprawling tree.

Scott

One more.

Scott

For some reason I can't make your thumbnail images load. Problem is probably at my end. I'll try again later.

Guy S.

Scott & Guy - still no photos, and we have DSL, it's not your fault, probably server is down.

Shot one.

Scott

Two.

Three.

Scott

I still get nothing but the red "X" of death. If you don't get this straightened out pretty soon I might just have to post my own Monster Maclura pic to intimidate your itty witty bitty tree!

Guy S.

OK, Decrepit, you asked for it. 20 feet in circumference, near Piasa, Illinois!
Guy S.

Here's the whole tree --
Guy S.

My monster Maclura must have scared you straight -- I see your pics are working now!
Guy S.

Alright, Guywire,

Anybody can grow a single-stemmed Maclura with 20' circumference, but this beauty is a layed down, five-stemmed, rambling, acre-occupying behemoth! Makes yours look like a toy.

Scott

Scott, I love trees with character! I imagine the youngsters love to clamber around on that one.

Maclura is a great genus. No two are alike, and some are fantastic! Yours reminds me of one in Urbana Illinois with four prostrate trunks pointing the cardinal directions. It's called the Compass Tree. Maybe yours should be the Octopus Tree?

Guy S.

I hope mine grow up to take on the form of the ones in these pictures. They are beautiful. I have one windshield and one seedling.

Escambia, they also vary tremendously in growth rate. There are some fairly small ones at the Missouri Botanic Garden that were planted by Shaw himself, but the one in my photo also originated no earlier than the 1840s and perhaps much later. And if you have seen the one next to my house on my web album, nearly 15 feet in circumference, remember that it began in the 1930s. So you have hope!

Guy S.

Lord, I don't know why I called it "windshield" LOL. I meant to type "Whiteshield". I just now caught that.

I was thinking it might have had something to do with a fruit crashing through your windshield!

Scott

LOL, I came pretty close to asking about "windshield".

Yeah, I just figured his feeble mind was drifting over to the Car-Talk forum!

By the way, 'Whiteshield' is a class act. You made a good choice.

By the way again, this species would be another good choice for the person who wanted a swing tree, wherever that thread is.

Guy S.

"Whiteshield" is one of the male cultivars named after native chiefs, yes? The tree's dioecious.

I have a few dozen M. pomifera seedling trees in pots...too-small pots. I potted up some in one-gallon pots a few years ago, and a series of problems prevented me from planting them out. One of them has shot up to over 25 feet; some of the others are stunted. If that one's genetically predisposed to fast growth, I should be taking cuttings. And I should be getting the others properly planted if I can do that without killing too many.

The tree seems very adaptable. I'm about 20 miles from the largest known one in Florida, yet I have not made a pilgrimage (It's in Micanopy, and I can't find my Big Trees of Florida book just now to give dimensions).

If you think that global warming is due to too much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, you should be planting these trees: they can grow rather quickly, the wood does not easily rot (can last fifty years as a fencepost, then be turned upside down, set in in the ground the other way, and may last another fifty) so the carbon in them will stay out of the environment even after they die or are felled, and...the wood. It's beautiful. It's dense, hard, very strong yet flexible enough for serious bow-making. Under a thin layer of white sapwood it's screaming yellow-orange, but a few months of exposure to light turns it a very rich brown (a pity in a way: the color of fresh heartwood is striking to the point of tastelessness). It takes a glassy finish all on its own, it's so hard. If you must burn it, the wood burns very hot, almost like anthracite coal, and there are tales of woodstoves being ruined by being filled with well-dried "bodark" wood. Blocks of it were used to pave streets and sidewalks in Texas towns -- but often they were green blocks that oozed sap and made a mess; certainly they would have lasted for decades...

gooley's assessment of Maclura pomifera's many qualities is on the money, but I think it's a strictly anthropomorphic view of that plant, which doesn't necessarily support the statement:

Point taken...maybe native plants are best, especially for mass plantings. Around here, the global-warming fighter of choice would definitely be baldcypress, which is about as native as you can get, and not replanted enough after it's cut down (sometimes it regenerates from stumps, which helps). Sadly, the county (Alachua County, Florida) here doesn't give tax breaks for planting it, the way they give for planting pines, so pines (at least mostly native pines like P. ellioti and P taeda) get planted heavily and baldcypress and its also-native relative pondcypress do not. Baldcypress and pondcypress wood does not rot readily either, which is good for fixing carbon. The trees can grow in shallow standing water but do not require it; they do well anywhere where they have enough moisture.

(Yeah, I know my approach is a bit human-centered: have the trees lock up the excess carbon put in the air by human actions. I can see why this may not be a palatable solution if followed willy-nilly, especially if one is idealistic about nature.)

Both the county and the City of Gainesville have official policies of not using mulch made from shredded baldcypress/pondcypress. This is well-meaning but more symbolic than anything else. Costs a lot less than giving tax breaks, though.

Mark., but I digress

Good job, Mark. I didn't expect you were a wild raving lunatic, but there are those who take everything at face value without peeling some of the layers back.

I really like the Taxodium for tax breaks slogan, though. That's t-shirt territory, or at least bumper sticker worthy.