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.
Comments
Post a Comment