Maclura is a genus belong to Moraceae family, consist of 15 species. They are usually thorny, deciduous or evergreen, dioecious trees, shrubs or climbers, the branches often reduced to spins. Naturally found in East Asia to Australia, and from South Central USA to South America.

MACLURA POMİFERA  (Maclura aurantiaca) OSAGE ORANGE

Naturally found in South Central USA. Maclura pomifera is one of the most widely planted trees in North America, especially on the plains, yet it has no commercial value as timber, lumber or even pulpwood. Instead, it was used to make high, thick, thorny, termite and rot resistant hedgerows. It did such an admirable job as hedging material.

Botanically, the Maclura pomifera, was named for a Scottish-born semi-American geologist named William Maclure, pomifera means bearing apples.

Bois d’arc  and Bow Wood are common names for Osage Orange that hint back to the native American Indian’s use of the wood to make bows. (The Osage Nation is a Native American Siouan-speaking tribe in the United States that originated in the Ohio River valley in present-day Kentucky. After years of war with invading Iroquois, the Osage migrated west of the Mississippi River to their historic lands in present-day Arkansas, Missouri, Kansas, and Oklahoma by the mid-17th century).

Maclura pomifera rounded, deciduous tree, thorny when young, becoming less so with age, with ovate, pointed, dark green leaves, to 10 cm long, turning yellow in autumn. Tiny cup shaped, yellow-green flowers (the females in short racemes, males in dence, spherical clusters) are born in late spring or early summer, followed on female trees by large, wrinkled, yellow-green fruit, to 12 cm across.

Osage Orange is a very frost resistant tree, can reach up to 15 metres high and 12 meters wide. The trees will be either male or female, and only the females will produce hedge balls. The trees become sexually mature by age 10 and there is no easy way to determine the gender prior to then. The trees can grow quickly in a good location with ideal growing conditions.

Use in Landscape: They make a decent shade tree within ten years. Maclura pomifera often used to make a natural and cheap hedgerow.  To make a hedgerow, the trees should be planted no more than 150 cm apart and plan to thin them as they get bigger. Osage Orange fruit is known alternately as “Hedge Apple” and is inedible to almost every animal except squirrels. The fruit is often used as a natural insect repellent, especially for cockroaches and crickets, as well as a dye.

Maclura pomifera has been successfully used in strip mine reclamation. Its ease of planting, tolerance of alkaline soil, and resistance to drought are desirable qualities. These qualities plus quick growth, long life, and resistance to injury by ice, wind, insects, and diseases make Maclura pomifera a valued landscape plant.