We have a really big one just south of our house. If I had it to do over, I would have had it removed 22 years ago when we moved in. Now it’s too late, and as I get older it gets to be more of a pain.

Fortunately it doesn’t get the apples in the fall, but every spring it’s a mess. It gets these little fuzzy green balls about the diameter of a nickel. It drops them for about 2 weeks, and it’s an everyday job to blow them off the deck and sidewalk. If they get wet, they kind of turn to a mush and stick to whatever they’re on.

I try to keep up with them, and I’ve been on the roof twice to blow them off, but that didn’t help me Thursday. We had a lot of wind from the south, and some heavy rain for a short time. These damn things almost covered the southern roof, and of course a bunch of them ended up on top of my gutter guards, and they plug up all the drainage holes. Fortunately the rain didn’t last long. So yesterday I spent a couple hours on the roof with a broom getting them unstuck from the shingles and gutter guards, then with the leaf blower to get them cleaned off.

I truly hate this damn tree. As I get older, I’m not as comfortable getting on and off the roof from a ladder, and I’d really rather not be walking around up there with a broom and a leaf blower. I’d love to have it removed, but it provides a lot of shade, and I won’t live long enough to see a replacement tree grow big.

I had to look them up...around here we call them Osage Orange trees...local legend is that they were brought here in SE Tennesee and GA by the Cherokee for bow making back in the day (it may or not be true, but that's what I was told as a kid and it's a good story)...

There are a couple near me and they make a mess on the road when they drop those apple/orange thingies and they look big enough to probably put a pretty nice dent in a car.

Never heard of them either. Interesting tidbit on Wikipedia:

quote:

When dried, the wood has the highest BTU content of any commonly available North American wood, and burns long and hot.

Otherwise know as Bois d Arc or Horse apple trees!

I've heard them called Osage Orange. It's just not popular around here.

The wood does have an orange tint to it. It's stringy and hard to split, and it burns hotter than hell. The wood is very hard, and you can go through a chain saw chain pretty quick. I've started using the carbide chains. They will last all summer.

They make good fence posts. You can't make them rot. I have some stumps that I have cut off at ground level, drilled holes in, and poured Triclopyr on. After a couple years, they'll finally stop sprouting, but they never seem to rot. I have some that are 20 years old, and you still can't sink an axe into them.

They are not pretty trees, and they are always dropping sticks. They're hell on lawn mower tires because some of the sticks have thorns on them. But they are tough SOBs and they do make a lot of shade.

Wow that triggers a memory. When I was a youngster I put in tons of Bois D’Arc fence posts in rural farm and ranch land of SW Oklahoma.

Those things are tougher than a Two Dollar Steak.

With some effort you can make into a heckuva club. For checking tires, of course.

I pulled fence for a guy who had put in the hedge posts 40 years prior, with his dad. Some were no bigger than my wrist, not a one was rotted or broken.

The wood was still that yellow color inside. I remember old timers claiming hedge would burn out a stove if it wasn't good enough for coal. They also claimed many fresh posts would root.

Hedge make horrible specimen trees, only slightly better hedges.

They make terrific bows. The problem is getting a clear piece of wood to use. Mine was laminated, backed with hickory and sanded to shape.

but think of all the insurance money you have saved over the years,
no one steals them !

if you set the balls in the cellar ( on inverted jar lids) , they keep most of the spiders away .

you wno't find a better fence post,

The little green fuzzy balls mean that tree is male.

I've been fascinated by that tree since I first learned about it. It's pretty amazing in a lot of ways.

Recently I took my kids to a historical education type thing. One of the presenters/reenactors there was a bow maker. He used Osage orange as his material. It can be hard to get good straight pieces - he said he had his best luck with old fence posts. And the bow he was currently working on came from an old fence post that he thought was older than he was, and he was around 60.

I’ve heard they’re supposed to keep crickets away also.

I have what was part of an old hedge row at the back of my property. I have been cleaning it out for about six or seven years, and there are eight hedge trees left that I won’t cut down. Thankfully only one of them has balls. They are about six or 7 inches in diameter. In the fall, I’ve seriously considered wearing my motorcycle helmet when I mow, just in case.

I like them. There are still quite a few hedge rows here in cornfields and cows country, although not nearly as many as when I was growing up. Back then, you could count on hedge rows for quail, rabbits and other game.

Osage Orange was used for natural fence and a lot of farmers would just string a row or two of wire along a hedge row to contain their livestock.

Osage Orange is good for firewood but the caution of not using too much at one time in the stove was always what I heard as a kid and was adhered to by those using it. I know that the wood is tough on chainsaws.

We still have a few Osage Orange (most folks in these parts call them hedge) trees on our little farm. They don't cause any problems for us and seeing them and the hedge apples they produce in the fall, conjures up memories of my boyhood days.

Osage Orange is also used to make handgun grips.

I have been known to use the apples for target practice.

My commercial ZTR makes an oddly satisfying THWACK when I hit them when I mow.

My wife and father in law made me an awesome straight baton from hedge from his farm.