Linkwood Osage
Welcome to the digital home of an osage orange, you are probably standing right in front of.
What kind of tree is this?
First of all, it is not a breadfruit tree, for that 1 person that keeps insisting we have a breadfruit tree in front of our house.
It is a Maclura pomifera, or commonly known as an Osage Orange tree — it is actually part of the Mulberry tree family. Check out Wikipedia for all the deets. In short it is a small deciduous tree (meaning the leaves fall off). It is native to Southern and Central United States, originating in the Red River drainage area of Oklahoma, Texas, and Arkansas. It travels easily and lives in a bunch of different type soils. But what makes it memorable are the softball size green fruit it produces.
Pick one up. It is actually a multiple fruit, like a pineapple, formed from a cluster of flowers. Each bump, or "gyrus," is the expanded and fused individual fruit, while the crevices, or "sulci," are the result of the irregular boundaries between them. This makes the fruit look “brain-like”. If the fruit gets cut or damages (throw it hard onto the cement), it oozes a sticky, white, bitter latex, and its pale, dense interior contains hundreds of small, edible seeds.
What do you do with the fruit?
What don’t you do with it? amirite? Actually, don’t eat it. It is not breadfruit (see above).
But let’s go into the uses, so you can bring home as many as you can to do crafts and decorations around your house.
Decorations
Eventually, the air and cold will make the bright green turn yellow and then brown. Until then, Osage Oranges look amazing in wreaths, table displays, and front steps.
Check out this Pinterest Board for inspiration.
Dyes
The wood of the Osage Orange or “bois d'arc” tree yields a soft and rich yellow for dyes. We will leave harvested branches for you to take, please do not cut your own.
Watch the thorns. Dye resources here.
Things to watch out for
You can pick out the seed to eat or to press for Pomifera oil, but be warned the latex inner liquid is super sticky and it takes a lot of seeds to do anything fun.
And if you leave these on anything wooden.
As far as I know, you can’t make alcohol out of the fruit. I have tried, but I’m not a brewer. Let me know if you have any success.
If you bake the fruit, or cook it, your house will smell like used diapers. Lesson learned and you have been warned.
Do not eat like an apple, or breadfruit.
They are fun to throw, but please be aware of traffic, both to not hit and also to not run in front of.
The thorns suck. It definitely makes sense if you think about what would have eaten this fruit. Mastadons and Giant Ground Sloths were huge and they prob didn’t mind a little dental probing.
We love talking to all of the people who stop and share their insights and stories around this and other trees. Please drop a line to share your thoughts and images of anything you have made. We would love to build an archive for this amazing tree.