“Don’t sit under the Osage Orange with anybody else but me.” Maclura pomifera, a.k.a. bois d’arc, bodark, hedge-apple. There are several in Prospect Park, but this one in the Nethermead is the park’s finest example. It should be dropping its cargo of softball-sized fruits any second now. Folk belief has these “apples” used to scare off roaches, but a friend tried this once and the roaches just laughed at her in that deeply cynical way roaches have of laughing. Once I lived in Iowa City, where the local landmark “Kurt Vonnegut House” — that dotty old bird Montana Wildhack used to throw the craziest parties there — was at the top of a street from which the fruits rolled down in the fall.
Osage Orange
8 responses to “Osage Orange”
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Considering how big and hard the Osage oranges are, I won’t be sitting under the Osage orange tree with ANYONE. Ouch!
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They usually put a temporary fence around that tree during the bombardment period.
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Here in northern Wisconsin I’ve seen two different grocery stores selling “hedge apples” in their produce sections as natural bug repellent. Coming from Ohio where you could pick up as many as you wanted from the ground at the right time of year, to me this seems extremely bizarre.
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Sometimes you will see them sold at local farmer’s markets here. I think they’re mostly conversational starters…
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So that’s what those things are. I’ve seen them around & wondered. Are the trees native to NYC?
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They were native to AK, OK, LA, TX, but naturalized all over the east now. Traditionally planted as natural hedges and fences. Some other names include mockorange and horse apple.
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[…] fruits of the Osage Orange are falling. They are sap-sticky and alien-brainy when fresh. Share […]
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Hedge apple are a natural way to keep spiders, mice, etc. out of the
house and really anywhere you don’t want bugs. I have hedge trees and
have them every year they last a long time.
Backyard and Beyond 
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