Osage Orange, a thorny tree of the mulberry family. It is also called hedge apple, bow-wood, bois d'arc, and bodark. The tree, which produces inedible orange-like fruit, grows wild from Arkansas to northern Texas. The Indians in this area made bows from the flexible, durable wood of the tree. Used as a hedge plant, the Osage orange has been successfully raised as far north as Massachusetts and Illinois. The wood is used for fenceposts. An orange-yellow dye is extracted from chips of the wood.
The Osage orange tree grows to 60 feet (18 m) in height and 3 feet (90 cm) in diameter. It has orange-brown bark and pointed, roughly oval-shaped leaves. All of the flowers on each tree are either male or female. The greenish male flowers grow in hanging clusters almost one inch (2.5 cm) long, while the female flowers grow in spherical clusters one inch in diameter. The roughly spherical fruit is about five inches (13 cm) in diameter, and has a wrinkled, yellow-green skin. Raised from seed, the young trees grow fast.
The Osage orange is Maclura pomifera of the mulberry family, Moraceae.