Osage orange, horseapple, brainfruit…whatever you want to call it, this was a very good year for the local representatives of Maclura pomifera. This tree last year had maybe one fruit per clutch, and now it has anywhere between six and eight.
And on discussions as to whether or not Osage oranges were a regular food item for the Pleistocene megafauna of Texas, such as Columbian mammoths and ground sloths, I really need to ask a few keepers at either the Dallas or Fort Worth Zoos if they’ve ever offered them to the resident elephants. I’m really curious as to how well modern-day megafauna relatives, other than horses, would take to them. All I can say for certain is that these aren’t anything that humans are going to want to eat any time soon, even with all of the catsup and Tabasco sauce in the world.
Do you ever collect the seed? One of these days, I want to try some of those up here- I have this dream of creating a hedgerow of things like that, hawthorn, barberry, rugosa rose, that the *(%*&! deer won’t bother.
Laurie, if you want, I can send you some of the fruit, and you can get the seed from them. Quite a few people swear by these as cockroach repellent, but I personally like them just because they’re that different. I will warn you that squirrels and chipmunks also love Osage oranges, and will tear them apart for the seeds, so you don’t want to leave them out where either vermin can reach them.