THE OSAGE ORANGE 99 



great tribe of Australian eucalyptus trees, now largely 

 planted in the Southwest. 



The Osage Orange 



Toxylon pomiferum. Raff. 



Related to figs and mulberries, but solitary in the genus 

 toxylon, is the osage orange, a handsome round-headed 

 tree, native of eastern North America, whose fleshy roots 

 and milky, bitter, rubbery sap reveal its family connec- 

 tions with the tropical rubber plants. (See illustration, 

 page 119.) The fruits are great yellow-green globes, four to 

 five inches in diameter, covered on the outside by crowded, 

 one-seeded berries. This compound fruit reveals the tree's 

 relationship to both figs and mulberries. 



The aborigines, especially of the Osage tribe, in the 

 middle Mississippi Valley, cherished these trees for their 

 orange-yellow wood, which is hard, heavy, flexible, and 

 strong — the best bow-wood to be found east of the Rocky 

 Mountains. When the settlers came the sharp thorns 

 with which the branches are effectually armed appealed 

 strongly to the busy farmers and the tree was widely 

 planted for hedges. Nurserymen produced them by 

 thousands, from cuttings of root and branch. These trees 

 made rapid growth and seemed most promising as a solu- 

 tion of the fencing problem, but they did not prove hardy 

 in Iowa and neighboring states. Even now remnants of 

 those old winter-killed hedges may be found on farm 

 boundaries, individual trees having been able to survive. 



The native osage orange timber is about all gone, for the 

 rich bottom lands where it once grew most abundantly in 

 Oklahoma and Texas have been converted into farm land. 



