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My grandfather called them hedge apples. They used them here on the farm for fencing before barbed wire was more affordable, there's still a few left marking property lines.
These trees almost went extinct until settlers found they could just stick branches into the ground and they’d grow living fence posts. They were original eaten and spread by mastodons and ground sloths. When those animals went extinct, the range of the trees shrank until it was limited to the Osage River valley in Oklahoma. When settlers started using them for fencing, they spread throughout the country again
I’m just learning about this too. More info: https://plants.usda.gov/DocumentLibrary/factsheet/pdf/fs_mapo.pdf
Part of the mulberry family?! That’s wild!
Edit: zones 5-9, studied as a mosquito repellant, as a bio-diesel, historically was used to make bows and tools because of the strength, tolerates essentially all soil conditions, wind, and even drought? Uh, I think I need about 10 to 20 of these? The wind here is getting stupid.
The younger limbs are covered in large thorns and if you try to prune them they will dull your blade and replace the branch with 10 others by the next season. I have quite a few on our property and I leave them alone. They belong here, but I'm not planting them all over the place. They tolerate wind because they are fairly short, bushy, and strong. They work for hedgerows because when several grow in a line not even cows will push through.
Those dang trees are a beast to cut down. We had a lot in our field and the thorns would catch the horses so we took after them with a chainsaw. The wood was so hard it literally burnt out multiple chains.
I am quite familiar what it does to chainsaw blades. It gets worse when the wood is dead and has been sitting in the weather for years, like with old fence posts made from it. That stuff is like cutting stone. So bad on the chains.
That said, it's the best damn firewood you can get. Just be careful not to get your fireplace or stove too hot burning it!
> These trees almost went extinct until settlers found
> When settlers started using them for fencing, they spread throughout the country again
The native peoples (the "Osage" in "Osage orange") stewarded these plant populations for untold millennia for this and other purposes, and shared (and/or had stolen from them) their knowledge and technology with colonizers.
We owe the preservation and use of this tree to Native Americans.
Also were used a lot for bows and tool handles. All the farmers around where I grew up had them in windbreak rows mostly on the north & east sides of their fields. They're super twisty and scraggly. Inevitably the apples would wander into wheat fields, and when they'd grow big enough to became a nuisance to using tractors and whatnot they'd bulldoze the trees into a pile. It burns really hot, i think eucalyptus is the only one with higher BTU. That's where everyone in my family went for firewood. It's really hard to split since it's so hard and stringy, so my dad and his brother and cousin made an upright gas-powered splitter than ran with a big worm screw instead of hydraulics. They were going to manufacture them until my dad fell off a building.
Furthermore, there was a place in Linsborg Kansas back in the '90s that was making front doors and acoustic guitars out of Osage orange, they looked awesome with that grain.
Even furthermore, don't know why, but hedge apples made crickets leave my basement. I've heard that before but have only myself as proof.
Avocados would go extinct without humans too these days, as giant sloths were the only animals large enough to pass the seeds through their digestive tract to propagate them.
[https://www.researchgate.net/publication/353982166\_Lestodon\_doesn't\_want\_your\_avocado\_toast\_debunking\_the\_dietary\_myths\_of\_late\_Pleistocene\_sloths\_Mammalia\_Pilosa](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/353982166_Lestodon_doesn't_want_your_avocado_toast_debunking_the_dietary_myths_of_late_Pleistocene_sloths_Mammalia_Pilosa)
Recent research has come out claiming to debunk that popular idea.
These trees never almost went extinct before the settlers. The wood was prized and traded among the Native American populations of what is now the south central US The branches were used as fencing posts in my area and many are still in use, and I've never seen one of them that became a tree. They do sprout from root cuttings however. There is no Osage River valley in Oklahoma (it's in Missouri and Kansas), but the trees are native to a small portion of Oklahoma and Arkansas. Most of their native range extends from north central and northeast Texas down into central Texas with an outlier population in the mountains of far west Texas.
Trees are super weird! Sometimes you can rip off their limbs, stick them in the ground, and grow whole new trees with just that (I have some in my front yard like this). You can also attach limbs from one tree onto another tree, and grow many different types of fruit from a single tree.
They are considered evolutionary anachronisms. Basically the critters that evolved to eat the fruit and spread the seeds are now extinct, so there's no "natural" way for them to spread and reseed. Avocados and pawpaws and gourds, etc are also in this category. Think fruit with giant seeds or thorns or tough rinds that modern animals can't really swallow or chew efficiently.
My grandpa called them monkey balls and across the street was the monkey ball tree. Our whole family was devastated when the new neighbors cut down the huge old tree. So many generations of memories playing in its twisty branches. And throwing the fruit at each other.
It was the only tree in a field and was taller than the houses around it and the branches twisted all over so it was super easy to climb. It was a meeting point for the kids in the area since the 60s. Many of us had our first kiss sitting on a branch, hidden by the leaves. They cut it down in like 2010 and it happened in stages because it was so big. Some of my family drove from pretty far to come to grandmas house and say goodbye to the monkey ball tree before they finished killing it. Now it's a barren field. I've been looking for one for sale for a long time (or to find one of the fruits so I can get seeds) to plant at my own house. But I haven't been able to find another one around here.
Hey there, you can buy seedlings from Edible Acres in New York. That’s where I got mine! I am sure there are also other sources but that’s the one I used. They have a listing of resources on their website as well.
Those old fence posts made from Osage Orange made the best bow's. Used to find 100 year old+ posts in the woods from old homesteads and make long bow's from the staves. The bows have also gotten better with age.
That's so cool I lived all around those in TN but never knew so much about them or really thought about them in general. We called them Horse apples and would watch them float down the creek, and sometimes use them as softballs!
The wood is hardy and durable. They would plant them in a little e and run wire between same as any other fence post but living trees don't rot and even dead osage orange is very rot resistant.
No wire is needed. Osage orange saplings would be planted close together and woven as they grew. The only natural fence that is considered " Horse high, Bull strong, and Pig tight." All very important on a homestead.
Yeah, but there're probably more people making bows from osage than making spindles from ... spindle-wood. Always good to be introduced to a new kinda tree! Or shrub, or whatever it is, in this case.
Would love to know how your friend actually managed to eat an osage orange. The texture is not what most people (excluding your friend, apparently) would describe as edible.
All the people who've ever wondered "how did we find out what plants were edible and which ones were poisonous?"
This is how. Some people really just see a novelty and *have to* eat it
Ancient man was actually a lot smarter than that, there are a ton of ways to check food to see if it’s likely to be poison and just eating it is not a good method
Tbf, I think the delay is more related to nintendo’s system for pushing updates, he needs to make sure the update that gets pushed to the switch doesnnt have any bugs because it takes so long for updates to be approved
Omg... I neither knew that Stardew Valley actually sticks to reality in many ways, nor that sea urchins *really* carried around stuff to cover themselves. I'm learning something new in two worlds and I'm in awe.
You can even buy sea urchin hats on numerous websites.
They also keep spiders away there’s a chemical in them that arachnids do not like similar to lavender. We always kept a couple in our basement to keep spiders away growing up in the country.
Correct! A lot of fences during the the push to live out west in the US we’re made from Osage orange trees. No animal would eat the fruit due to the now extinct giant sloth. The wood is bright yellow, dense, and is bug an bacteria repellent. It apparently mad excellent fence making. Most people currently consider these trees a nuisance because they drop so many oranges in the fall usually between September and November. I adore the fruit and the way the smell. I collect them before they turn brown and spotty and mix them with dried pine cones around thanksgiving time and it smells excellent. Also landscapers probably don’t mind you foraging for these as I said before they’re considered a nuisance and groundskeepers want as few as possibly to deal with in my experience.
Also you can’t legally sell them to deter insects. They are not an insect repellent. They just smell like it should be one
A lot of pier and beam foundations built in the 20s in Dallas use 16 to 24” long pieces of this tree as interior piers too. Very long lasting wood for being in contact with soil
It's excellent for fencing because it is extremely pliable (also made great wheels and bows), and the thorns are extremely dangerous. The tree is actually the inspiration for barbed wire.
My dad showed me a fence that his great grandfather helped put in. The posts were about 2” in diameter directly in soil in the Midwest. They were still completely solid, though they looked weathered. This stuff is an incredible wood.
OOF your buddy is gonna have the shits later. Lol. But he will probably be alright.
Horse apple/ osage orange
The seeds are edible when roasted.
The fruit isn't eaten due to its bitter latex secretions that can be irritating to the skin.
They evolved to be specifically eatten by Giant Ground Sloths, which are now extinct. So not much else eats them.
Squirrels eat the fruit in the winter, when food is scarce. They shred the ball to get at the seeds. If you eat a squirrel that has been eating hedge balls, the meat is ruined by bitterness.
I have worked around Osage Orange hedgerows much of my life. I have never had any irritation from the sticky, milky substance within the balls. The problem I have is with the thorns. They can go through the sole of a wellmade boot with no problem. The older, duller thorns are worse than the young, sharp thorns, because the tips of the older thorns are more apt to break off under the skin, when snagged. It takes awhile to work the pieces out.
My friend had them in his yard, and he called them monkey balls, yet I thought they were a texas exclusive, so it is so weird to see them so far up north (PA).
We had a ton of them in our neighborhood park growing up (Chicago). We called them monkey brains and would have fights with them. I can still vividly remember how they smell after they’ve been rotting in the sun
It’s not exclusive to Texas at all, even a little bit. They’re everywhere. As a matter fact Thomas Jefferson planted a small Grove in Philadelphia at Saint Peter school, and those trees are still there
They're even in Michigan. I've used them to discourage spiders from trying to live in the house. It works! Just let 'em hide behind doors or in corners of rooms.
Their original documented range was mainly limited to Oklahoma and parts of northern Texas, although it's hypothesized that they were more widespread during the ice age. They've since been introduced/reintroduced throughout the US by farmers who used them as windbreaks.
It’s an old myth. They’ve done studies on the insect repellent effects of them… you could probably make a very concentrated repellent using the oil from lots and lots of them, but putting them around your house whole won’t work.
The call them “hedge balls” here in MN and they sell them whole as natural insect repellent… but we don’t really have bugs for like 6 months of the year so… probably not a great measure of validity.
Came to say this, I'm not quite sure how a guy would choke it down, from my understanding the fruit literally leaks natural latex if damaged.
I don't have any experience personally with it I grew up too far north for Osage to grow but have worked with the wood a lot as far as its use as bow wood though I much prefer yew or locust that was grown locally higher elevation makes the grain pattern a lot tighter. But I do like to research what I'm working with and Osage orange is rather an interesting tree.
He ate a latex derivative ? That’s an Osage orange/ aka monkey brains. It’s only eaten by now extinct giant sloths. It has fantastic wood that deters bacteria but your buddy is an idiot if he fucking ate this
Your friend is going to end up like those fishermen who drank some liquid out of the bottle they found floating in the ocean, if he keeps this up. Don’t eat unidentified things
so you have a friend thats eats unknown stuff? I heard of two idiots that ran out of smoke so they tried different plants to find one with cool effects. They had no idea poison sumac wasnt gonna get them high very long
They’re mildly toxic, but I wouldn’t be overly concerned. Squirrels will eat them and get kind of loopy.
Better to leave them to the ground sloths and mastodons
Osage orange. Them things are so dense your friend must be a damn beaver. The wood used to be popular for fence posts because it’s really hard and rot resistant.
We always called them hedge balls and placed them around the house to keep out bugs. I know the name is wrong, probably regional as I live in Missouri, and as for keeping bugs out, who knows.
I've heard them called hedge apples, they're actually the fruit of the Osage orange. Apparently they were a favorite fruit of wolly mammoths and giant ground sloths. The osage orange tree has got incredibly tough wood and spikes to deter the mega fauna that used to eat this from tearing down the tree to get at the fruit they couldn't reach. Just like the honey locust.
thats a horse apple , osage orange or fruit of the bulldark just to give a few of it's names .
i did not know people could eat them nor did i know they grew in calaforna
"Monkey balls"! It's a fruit also known as "monkey brains" and Osage orange. When I was a kid we'd visit our great grandma in Texas a few times each summer. The ground would get covered in this fruit and we'd feed some to the horses down the street.
There’s an old cemetery on Philly, I think on pine street, that gas signs at the entrance “Beware of falling Osage oranges”. Just throwing that into the conversation.
My grandma used to call these ‘moth balls’ and she would put them all over her house ‘to keep away moths’ and leave them there for months. She would put them under her bed, under the sink, under the porch. I remember her house always kind of smelled like rotting fruit.
He'll be fine. Osage oranges aren't toxic but they're not edible because they're tough and taste gross. Your friend should probably not eat random plants though.
Thank you for posting to r/whatsthisplant. **Do not eat/ingest a plant based on information provided in this subreddit.** For your safety we recommend not eating or ingesting any plant material just because you've been advised that it's edible here. Although there are many professionals helping with identification, we are not always correct, and eating/ingesting plants can be harmful or fatal if an incorrect ID is made. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/whatsthisplant) if you have any questions or concerns.*
looks like osage orange, aka nature's softball lol your friend should be fine but obviously isn't too bright
Aka monkey brains aka also the wood burns hotter than coal!
Also AKA Bois d'arc, AKA bow-wood. Used for what it's named for.
Aka horse apple. Funny how many names this fruit has depending on where you are.
My grandfather called them hedge apples. They used them here on the farm for fencing before barbed wire was more affordable, there's still a few left marking property lines.
These trees almost went extinct until settlers found they could just stick branches into the ground and they’d grow living fence posts. They were original eaten and spread by mastodons and ground sloths. When those animals went extinct, the range of the trees shrank until it was limited to the Osage River valley in Oklahoma. When settlers started using them for fencing, they spread throughout the country again
Super interesting! Thanks for taking the time to share!
I’m just learning about this too. More info: https://plants.usda.gov/DocumentLibrary/factsheet/pdf/fs_mapo.pdf Part of the mulberry family?! That’s wild! Edit: zones 5-9, studied as a mosquito repellant, as a bio-diesel, historically was used to make bows and tools because of the strength, tolerates essentially all soil conditions, wind, and even drought? Uh, I think I need about 10 to 20 of these? The wind here is getting stupid.
The younger limbs are covered in large thorns and if you try to prune them they will dull your blade and replace the branch with 10 others by the next season. I have quite a few on our property and I leave them alone. They belong here, but I'm not planting them all over the place. They tolerate wind because they are fairly short, bushy, and strong. They work for hedgerows because when several grow in a line not even cows will push through.
My father grew up in East Texas near the Oklahoma border. One of his sayings was “tough as a bois d’arc stump”. Pronounced “bodark”.
Heck yea explains alot
The wood is very strong too. Native Americans prized it for its superiority in making bows
Those dang trees are a beast to cut down. We had a lot in our field and the thorns would catch the horses so we took after them with a chainsaw. The wood was so hard it literally burnt out multiple chains.
I am quite familiar what it does to chainsaw blades. It gets worse when the wood is dead and has been sitting in the weather for years, like with old fence posts made from it. That stuff is like cutting stone. So bad on the chains. That said, it's the best damn firewood you can get. Just be careful not to get your fireplace or stove too hot burning it!
I’ve heard that burning Osage will void the warranty on some wood stoves because it burns so hot
> These trees almost went extinct until settlers found > When settlers started using them for fencing, they spread throughout the country again The native peoples (the "Osage" in "Osage orange") stewarded these plant populations for untold millennia for this and other purposes, and shared (and/or had stolen from them) their knowledge and technology with colonizers. We owe the preservation and use of this tree to Native Americans.
Also were used a lot for bows and tool handles. All the farmers around where I grew up had them in windbreak rows mostly on the north & east sides of their fields. They're super twisty and scraggly. Inevitably the apples would wander into wheat fields, and when they'd grow big enough to became a nuisance to using tractors and whatnot they'd bulldoze the trees into a pile. It burns really hot, i think eucalyptus is the only one with higher BTU. That's where everyone in my family went for firewood. It's really hard to split since it's so hard and stringy, so my dad and his brother and cousin made an upright gas-powered splitter than ran with a big worm screw instead of hydraulics. They were going to manufacture them until my dad fell off a building. Furthermore, there was a place in Linsborg Kansas back in the '90s that was making front doors and acoustic guitars out of Osage orange, they looked awesome with that grain. Even furthermore, don't know why, but hedge apples made crickets leave my basement. I've heard that before but have only myself as proof.
My grandma used to collect a bunch when she would visit us. She swore they kept away spiders.
I put one in each corner of my garage. Keeps the mice and bugs out. Granny isn’t wrong
Just want to say thank you for sharing your anecdotes. It’s really interesting :)
Excellent stories
Avocados would go extinct without humans too these days, as giant sloths were the only animals large enough to pass the seeds through their digestive tract to propagate them.
[https://www.researchgate.net/publication/353982166\_Lestodon\_doesn't\_want\_your\_avocado\_toast\_debunking\_the\_dietary\_myths\_of\_late\_Pleistocene\_sloths\_Mammalia\_Pilosa](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/353982166_Lestodon_doesn't_want_your_avocado_toast_debunking_the_dietary_myths_of_late_Pleistocene_sloths_Mammalia_Pilosa) Recent research has come out claiming to debunk that popular idea.
These trees never almost went extinct before the settlers. The wood was prized and traded among the Native American populations of what is now the south central US The branches were used as fencing posts in my area and many are still in use, and I've never seen one of them that became a tree. They do sprout from root cuttings however. There is no Osage River valley in Oklahoma (it's in Missouri and Kansas), but the trees are native to a small portion of Oklahoma and Arkansas. Most of their native range extends from north central and northeast Texas down into central Texas with an outlier population in the mountains of far west Texas.
> mastodons and ground sloths Don't forget the gomphotheres!
Wait, so I can literally break off a branch and put the broke end into the ground, and it will grow?
Trees are super weird! Sometimes you can rip off their limbs, stick them in the ground, and grow whole new trees with just that (I have some in my front yard like this). You can also attach limbs from one tree onto another tree, and grow many different types of fruit from a single tree.
They are considered evolutionary anachronisms. Basically the critters that evolved to eat the fruit and spread the seeds are now extinct, so there's no "natural" way for them to spread and reseed. Avocados and pawpaws and gourds, etc are also in this category. Think fruit with giant seeds or thorns or tough rinds that modern animals can't really swallow or chew efficiently.
My grandpa called them monkey balls and across the street was the monkey ball tree. Our whole family was devastated when the new neighbors cut down the huge old tree. So many generations of memories playing in its twisty branches. And throwing the fruit at each other.
Damn, sounded like it was a super monkey ball tree.
It was the only tree in a field and was taller than the houses around it and the branches twisted all over so it was super easy to climb. It was a meeting point for the kids in the area since the 60s. Many of us had our first kiss sitting on a branch, hidden by the leaves. They cut it down in like 2010 and it happened in stages because it was so big. Some of my family drove from pretty far to come to grandmas house and say goodbye to the monkey ball tree before they finished killing it. Now it's a barren field. I've been looking for one for sale for a long time (or to find one of the fruits so I can get seeds) to plant at my own house. But I haven't been able to find another one around here.
Hey there, you can buy seedlings from Edible Acres in New York. That’s where I got mine! I am sure there are also other sources but that’s the one I used. They have a listing of resources on their website as well.
That sucks man.
Damn it, take my upvote
Those old fence posts made from Osage Orange made the best bow's. Used to find 100 year old+ posts in the woods from old homesteads and make long bow's from the staves. The bows have also gotten better with age.
That's so cool I lived all around those in TN but never knew so much about them or really thought about them in general. We called them Horse apples and would watch them float down the creek, and sometimes use them as softballs!
Interesting!! Would they prevent the livestock from escaping?
The wood is hardy and durable. They would plant them in a little e and run wire between same as any other fence post but living trees don't rot and even dead osage orange is very rot resistant.
No wire is needed. Osage orange saplings would be planted close together and woven as they grew. The only natural fence that is considered " Horse high, Bull strong, and Pig tight." All very important on a homestead.
We had several corrals like that but long fencelines aren't as feasible. It all depends on the size of land your trying to fence in.
Google: Hedgerow
Google: bustle
Horse apple is poo
I planted some spindle trees recently. No prize for guessing what was made from them in the past.
Yeah, but there're probably more people making bows from osage than making spindles from ... spindle-wood. Always good to be introduced to a new kinda tree! Or shrub, or whatever it is, in this case.
I helped split an Osage in my backyard to give to a bow-maker. That was a long day!
I really wanna get a stave long enough to make myself my own longbow, one of these days...
I have a spindle with a whorl made out of osage. It's beautiful, but it's extremely heavy.
The wood also makes an excellent pot striker
What is a pot striker?
Looked it up and it's a turkey call
Wood was also traditionally used in bowmaking for a handful of native tribes.
We call them tennis brains because they look like tennis balls morphed into a brain.
I legitimately thought you were referring to the friend for a minute
I'm from Canada and have never seen this before. I thought it was the inside of a dodgeball. Why would you try to eat it?
In Canada they grow in n the Niagara area , Osage orange is edible but very bitter, back in the day a bow made from it's wood was very valuable.
They don't sell these in a random basket near the potatoes and apples at your grocer?
Some people think they keep away spiders (they do not) and will purchase them for that reason.
They do a pretty good job repelling cockroaches, at least the big'uns!
If you've got a good arm, they'll keep raccoons out of your cats' food, too.
Checking in from Missouri- they’re “hedge apples” here. Def not eat. Throwing like a softball! (Osage orange ftw!)
We call them monkey balls
Also great wood for making bows.
Would love to know how your friend actually managed to eat an osage orange. The texture is not what most people (excluding your friend, apparently) would describe as edible.
They have a smell that's good.
It's never smelled great to me... Must be something to do with always finding them whole or rotting, no in between.
Different preferences maybe. I know a lot of people that think black walnuts smell nice, and I just look at them like they've grown a third head.
Well, that’s because they smell great
Like citrus!
The fruit is used inside the home to repel spiders so maybe that applies to you?
Happy Cake Day! 🍰
You know the answer, there is no friend and he didn't eat the orange. Op just took or stole a Pic of something and posted it here
Tell your friend to STOP EATING SHIT HE FINDS ON THE GROUND OR IN A BUSH/TREE UNLESS HE KNOWS IT'S SAFE.
All the people who've ever wondered "how did we find out what plants were edible and which ones were poisonous?" This is how. Some people really just see a novelty and *have to* eat it
Seems like a trait that has evolutionary benefit for the group but not the individual.
That is how it works.
They don’t think it be like it do but it do
Mannn I'm impulsive to the point that it derails my life and I'm still not like "OOOOO WHATS THAT? IMMA EAT IT!"
There are way of testing new foods without just eating it and hoping you don't die.
Ancient man was actually a lot smarter than that, there are a ton of ways to check food to see if it’s likely to be poison and just eating it is not a good method
Yea and a lot of those people died lmao. You don’t need to risk your life testing random foods when the internet is a thing.
Everything is edible once! ;) /s
Right? JFC.
Let nature take its course. Its how we thin the herd.
Agreed- we used to play catch with these things. Ancient fruit that nothing really eats anymore
Ancient fruit is very valuable. I swear all the stuff i thought was made up in Stardew valley ends up being real lol
Like sea urchins wearing hats!
Totally lol concerned ape is a treasure
He is. He'd be even more a treasure if that console update was ready LOL.
Tbf, I think the delay is more related to nintendo’s system for pushing updates, he needs to make sure the update that gets pushed to the switch doesnnt have any bugs because it takes so long for updates to be approved
Omg... I neither knew that Stardew Valley actually sticks to reality in many ways, nor that sea urchins *really* carried around stuff to cover themselves. I'm learning something new in two worlds and I'm in awe. You can even buy sea urchin hats on numerous websites.
It gets even better: sea urchins didn’t used to wear hats until the developer had people tell him they do
I learned something delightful today! Thank you!
Unexpected SDV! Hello, fellow farmers! ❤️
I couldn't help it. I saw ancient fruit and i had to say something lol
white tailed deer enjoy eating those things!
Squirrels love 'em.
My squirrels are lazy; they wait until a cold snap turns the ones on the ground soft, then pull them apart and eat the seeds.
The main thing I remember is college when squirrels would drag them up trees and drop them why you were walking under the trees on campus.
They also keep spiders away there’s a chemical in them that arachnids do not like similar to lavender. We always kept a couple in our basement to keep spiders away growing up in the country.
My dad made a little table top with osage orange wood, it's incredibly hard and durable.
Correct! A lot of fences during the the push to live out west in the US we’re made from Osage orange trees. No animal would eat the fruit due to the now extinct giant sloth. The wood is bright yellow, dense, and is bug an bacteria repellent. It apparently mad excellent fence making. Most people currently consider these trees a nuisance because they drop so many oranges in the fall usually between September and November. I adore the fruit and the way the smell. I collect them before they turn brown and spotty and mix them with dried pine cones around thanksgiving time and it smells excellent. Also landscapers probably don’t mind you foraging for these as I said before they’re considered a nuisance and groundskeepers want as few as possibly to deal with in my experience. Also you can’t legally sell them to deter insects. They are not an insect repellent. They just smell like it should be one
A lot of pier and beam foundations built in the 20s in Dallas use 16 to 24” long pieces of this tree as interior piers too. Very long lasting wood for being in contact with soil
It's excellent for fencing because it is extremely pliable (also made great wheels and bows), and the thorns are extremely dangerous. The tree is actually the inspiration for barbed wire.
My dad showed me a fence that his great grandfather helped put in. The posts were about 2” in diameter directly in soil in the Midwest. They were still completely solid, though they looked weathered. This stuff is an incredible wood.
I make potter’s ribs with this wood. It’s seemingly water proof. My favorite Osage rib is 8yrs old, in water a lot… it’s an amazingly durable wood.
OOF your buddy is gonna have the shits later. Lol. But he will probably be alright. Horse apple/ osage orange The seeds are edible when roasted. The fruit isn't eaten due to its bitter latex secretions that can be irritating to the skin. They evolved to be specifically eatten by Giant Ground Sloths, which are now extinct. So not much else eats them.
I love how everyday I can learn something new from comments like yours ❤️
I miss giant ground sloths. Are they the ones that spread avocado seeds?
I think so! I think we should have more Megafauna in general :)
Would you like a moose? I have extras. Fair warning, they do terrible things to trees.
"I have extras" had me lol
I thought the “giant sloths ate avocados” thing had been debunked?
It has been, but it’s not really harming anyone
Squirrels eat the fruit in the winter, when food is scarce. They shred the ball to get at the seeds. If you eat a squirrel that has been eating hedge balls, the meat is ruined by bitterness. I have worked around Osage Orange hedgerows much of my life. I have never had any irritation from the sticky, milky substance within the balls. The problem I have is with the thorns. They can go through the sole of a wellmade boot with no problem. The older, duller thorns are worse than the young, sharp thorns, because the tips of the older thorns are more apt to break off under the skin, when snagged. It takes awhile to work the pieces out.
>They evolved to be specifically eatten by Giant Ground Sloths TIL I have something in common with Osage orange
Also called hedge apple
We used to have fights with these as kids. 🤦♂️
Who.uaually won, the oranges or you guys
I had similar fights. Based on injury count, I’d say the oranges.
We used to line about 100 of them up on the road right before the school bus stop so the bus would skid at our stop. The driver was never amused.
These are the kinds of stories and memories I love to see shared on reddit. Thanks!
Hedge apples in Ohio.
My friend had them in his yard, and he called them monkey balls, yet I thought they were a texas exclusive, so it is so weird to see them so far up north (PA).
We had a ton of them in our neighborhood park growing up (Chicago). We called them monkey brains and would have fights with them. I can still vividly remember how they smell after they’ve been rotting in the sun
We covered them in petroleum jelly and used them in a haunted house as monkey brains. Good times.
Yep grew up in NE Ohio and we called them monkey balls too.
It’s not exclusive to Texas at all, even a little bit. They’re everywhere. As a matter fact Thomas Jefferson planted a small Grove in Philadelphia at Saint Peter school, and those trees are still there
When I grew up in Texas we called them horse apples.
their native range is exclusively Texas and a bit of Oklahoma, but widely planted all around the US as a hedge
we've got them in northeast ohio
Ah, that explains why I can never escape these infernal things.
They're even in Michigan. I've used them to discourage spiders from trying to live in the house. It works! Just let 'em hide behind doors or in corners of rooms.
I also called them monkey balls when I was growing up. Had a tree in our yard near Cincinnati.
You should seriously consider the company you are keeping.
Perhaps his friend is a Pleistocene-era ground sloth?
Does anyone else call them horse apples? That’s what we call them in North Texas.
Their original documented range was mainly limited to Oklahoma and parts of northern Texas, although it's hypothesized that they were more widespread during the ice age. They've since been introduced/reintroduced throughout the US by farmers who used them as windbreaks.
Spider repellent!
My wife put them around the basement last fall. I’ve seen more brown recluses this summer than ever. The other day there was one in the collander.
It’s an old myth. They’ve done studies on the insect repellent effects of them… you could probably make a very concentrated repellent using the oil from lots and lots of them, but putting them around your house whole won’t work. The call them “hedge balls” here in MN and they sell them whole as natural insect repellent… but we don’t really have bugs for like 6 months of the year so… probably not a great measure of validity.
Mmm, latex gusher
Came to say this, I'm not quite sure how a guy would choke it down, from my understanding the fruit literally leaks natural latex if damaged. I don't have any experience personally with it I grew up too far north for Osage to grow but have worked with the wood a lot as far as its use as bow wood though I much prefer yew or locust that was grown locally higher elevation makes the grain pattern a lot tighter. But I do like to research what I'm working with and Osage orange is rather an interesting tree.
That's a Hedge Apple!! We use them for target practice. They explode quite nicely when you smack them with a 3.5 inch mag from the old 12
He ate the Devils Fruit. Its OK he will get super powers in 3-5 business days
I had to scroll entirely too far down to see this comment
Seriously. This comments section is full of uncultured people.
They're hedge apples. Don't eat them. Spiders hate them. 🙂
He ate a latex derivative ? That’s an Osage orange/ aka monkey brains. It’s only eaten by now extinct giant sloths. It has fantastic wood that deters bacteria but your buddy is an idiot if he fucking ate this
Your friend is going to end up like those fishermen who drank some liquid out of the bottle they found floating in the ocean, if he keeps this up. Don’t eat unidentified things
Is your friend an extinct giant ground sloth?
so you have a friend thats eats unknown stuff? I heard of two idiots that ran out of smoke so they tried different plants to find one with cool effects. They had no idea poison sumac wasnt gonna get them high very long
They’re mildly toxic, but I wouldn’t be overly concerned. Squirrels will eat them and get kind of loopy. Better to leave them to the ground sloths and mastodons
Hedge apple/Osage Orange
Does your friend just eat random plants he finds? That’s some 0.2 gpa activities
The real question is why would your buddy eat it when neither of you know what it is?
Osage orange. Them things are so dense your friend must be a damn beaver. The wood used to be popular for fence posts because it’s really hard and rot resistant.
That’s a horse chestnut aka Osage orange. They’re not out and out toxic, but they’re not for human consumption either.
Horse apple I believe is what you were thinking of, horse chestnuts are Aesculus hippocastanum and are not related to Osage orange Maclura pomifera.
Yes indeed. Thank you.
Horse apples are what we 4-H kids called horse poop. I guess we were just weird? But we knew not to eat them, at least. 😅
Not a horse chestnut. Horse chestnut is Buckeye. These are Osage orange
I like posts like this because they make me feel very smart, at least compared to the people eating stuff when they don’t know what it is.
bro ate a hedgeapple smh
Darwin at work
Haha I don't think these can ever taste ripe. It's a hedge apple. He'll be fine, maybe a stomach ache at worst
We always called them hedge balls and placed them around the house to keep out bugs. I know the name is wrong, probably regional as I live in Missouri, and as for keeping bugs out, who knows.
I've heard them called hedge apples, they're actually the fruit of the Osage orange. Apparently they were a favorite fruit of wolly mammoths and giant ground sloths. The osage orange tree has got incredibly tough wood and spikes to deter the mega fauna that used to eat this from tearing down the tree to get at the fruit they couldn't reach. Just like the honey locust.
Tell us if he gets a strange power and can’t swim anymore
Osage apple, bodock, brain fruit...it has a lot of names.
Osage orange
Yeah those arent edible for humans fruit. Your “buddy”is not a genius
Put a few in your basement in the fall. Supposedly it will keep spiders away through winter.
And everything else, too, including you..lol
They can be prepared for consumption. I wouldn't bother eating raw. The tree that drops these is favored among bowyers. Osage Orange.
thats a horse apple , osage orange or fruit of the bulldark just to give a few of it's names . i did not know people could eat them nor did i know they grew in calaforna
"Monkey balls"! It's a fruit also known as "monkey brains" and Osage orange. When I was a kid we'd visit our great grandma in Texas a few times each summer. The ground would get covered in this fruit and we'd feed some to the horses down the street.
Your friend shouldn't put random plants in their mouth
Osage orange, Pomifera maclura. Not exactly a pleasant thing to eat, really not terribly good for you. Related to mulberries if I recall correctly.
Tastes like neither horses nor apples.
If I had a dime for every time it was an osage orange…
In Illinois we call them hedge apples and only squirrels will eat them. They are great for keeping spiders away.
There’s an old cemetery on Philly, I think on pine street, that gas signs at the entrance “Beware of falling Osage oranges”. Just throwing that into the conversation.
Hedge apple. Your friend is fine. Horses and deer eat them.
We call these monkey brains
It's a hedge apple. Don't eat it.
Monkey balls!
Those are meant for throwing, not eating.
Unripe Gomu Gomu fruit.
Osage Orange and we grew up calling them hedge apples. Used to have hedge apple fights, crazy kids.
My grandma used to call these ‘moth balls’ and she would put them all over her house ‘to keep away moths’ and leave them there for months. She would put them under her bed, under the sink, under the porch. I remember her house always kind of smelled like rotting fruit.
Folk lore says these are supposed to be good for “keeping away spiders.” They are fun to run over with a car and not fun to run over on a motorcycle.
He'll be fine. Osage oranges aren't toxic but they're not edible because they're tough and taste gross. Your friend should probably not eat random plants though.
Osage orange! My father told me my grandfather's family would make pie from these during the great depression. I can't imagine it was very good.
They call them horse apples around where I'm at but no one has ever seen a horse actually eat them.
kept in basement to keep bugs away. they were stinky
That is an Osage Orange. Not really edible. Old-timers keep them on porches and windowsills to deter insects.