The tree dubbed with the scientific name Maclura pomifera goes by many common names, including Osage orange, hedge apple, horse apple, and bois d’arc. However, it’s neither an apple or an orange, but rather a member of the mulberry family.
A common question about the Osage orange is “what eats it,” especially in reference to the peculiar fruits. Perhaps surprisingly, the fruits, though tough and sticky, are readily torn apart by squirrels that seek out the pulp and seeds. Even northern bobwhite consume the seeds when encountering a torn-apart fruit. Even more, white-tailed deer, especially bucks, consume the fruits from time to time. However, it’s the leaves of Osage orange that have been found as important spring and summer deer foods in the state. Many birds nest among the limbs of Osage orange trees, including the loggerhead shrike, lark sparrow, American robin, and more.
This tree is an evolutionary anachronism that relied on Ice Age megafauna such as mammoths and giant ground sloths to eat the fruits and disperse the seeds. When these megafauna went extinct ~13,000 years ago, the range of this tree became restricted to the Red River basin of Oklahoma, Texas, and Arkansas. So, why are they still around? These trees can live for 130-250 years, which represents 50-100 generations of trees since the Ice Age extinctions, a relative blink of an eye from an evolutionary viewpoint.
Another reason this tree has persisted is its utility. The French named the tree, bois d’arc (bow-wood), because it was prized by Native Americans for making bows, and there is evidence that it was traded throughout North America. After European settlement, it became prized for making tool handles, fence posts, and as fire wood. When properly dried, its wood has the highest BTU rating (one BTU is equal to the amount of energy used to raise the temperature of 1 pound of water 1 degree Fahrenheit) of any North American tree. Its wood is very resistant to rot, as is demonstrated by many old fence posts still in use across the state. Before the advent of barbed wire, these thorny trees were pruned into dense hedges to keep livestock in their pastures. After the Dust Bowl, this species was also used to plant shelterbelts throughout the Great Plains to stabilize loose, sandy soil.
This tree has since been introduced throughout North America, and a tree given to Thomas Jefferson by Lewis (of Lewis and Clark) has descendants growing in Philadelphia and at the University of Virginia. Lewis obtained the seeds in 1807 from Mr. Peter Chouteau, a former Indian agent, who resided in the Osage nation of Oklahoma (thus the name, Osage Orange).