Not tennis balls, but ...

As I was walking around the Botanical Garden of Georgia in Tbilisi I noticed large green ‘tennis balls.’ But of course they weren’t tennis balls, but the fruit of the Maclura pomifera.

The Maclura pomifera is commonly called Osage orange, or hedge apple, or horse apple, or monkey ball, or bois d’arc (bow wood). However, it is neither an orange, nor an apple, nor even a monkey.

The tree is common in America, and was named after William Maclure (1763-1840). Maclure was a Scottish geologist, living in America, and President of the American Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia. Pomifera means ‘bearing apples’ – because the fruit looks like green apples. The term Osage orange comes from the tree’s use by the Osage Indians, who made bows from its wood.

The tree is small and deciduous, about 8-15 metres tall (25-50 feet), with male and female flowers (dioecious). The fruit is round with bumpy, but not spikey, nodes, and about 8-13 centimetres (3-5 inches) in diameter – the size of a tennis ball or grapefruit or large green apple. In autumn it turns bright lime-green. The bumps are called drupes. The ‘fruit’ is said to be inedible, but apparently the brown seeds inside can be eaten – they are a bit like raw sunflower seeds, according to the Eat the Weeds website (www.eattheweeds.com).

The Maclura pomifera is also found in countries such as Italy, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Slovenia, Serbia, Romania, India, Russia, and Georgia.

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