MULBERRY FAMILY 



must bear alternations of wet and dry, or is brought into con- 

 tact with the soil. In color it is a most brilliant orange, but 

 this dulls with time. It is largely used as a substitute for 

 olive wood in the manufacture of small articles. 



The Osage Orange is native to a deep and fertile soil but 

 it has great powers of adaptation and is hardy throughout the 

 north, where it is extensively used as a hedge plant. It needs 

 severe pruning to keep it in bounds and the shoots of a sin- 

 gle year will grow three to six feet long. 



The leaves are beautiful singly, but arranged alternately on 

 a slender growing shoot three or four feet long, varying from 

 dark to pale tender green, every one glistening and glittering 

 in the sunlight, they are indeed beautiful. In form they are 

 very simple, a long oval terminating in a slender point. In 

 the axil of every growing leaf is found a growing spine which 

 when mature is about an inch long, and rather formidable. 

 The pistillate and staminate flowers are on different trees ; 

 both are inconspicuous ; but the fruit is very much in evi- 

 dence. This in size and general appearance resembles a 

 large, yellow green orange, only its surface is roughened and 

 tuberculated. It is, in fact, a compound fruit such as the bot- 

 anists call a syncarp. Syncarp means that the carpels, that 

 is, the ovaries have grown together and that the great orange- 

 like ball is not one fruit but many > in fact just as many as 

 there are tubercles on the surface for each one represents a 

 ripened ovary. It is heavily charged with milky juice which 

 oozes out at the slightest wounding of the surface. Although 

 the flowering is dioecious, the pistillate tree even when iso- 

 lated will bear large oranges, perfect to the sight but lacking 

 the seeds. The fruit is eaten by cattle but is not good for 

 them. 



The tree is very prolific and a neglected hedge will soon 

 become fruit-bearing. It is remarkably free from insect ene- 

 mies and fungal diseases. 



262 



