CHAPTER XXVIII. 
THE BOW-WOOD, OR OSAGE ORANGE. 
Range of Growth, and Soil Favorable to its Growth.—Its Attainable 
Height.—The Incorruptible Property of its Wood.—Color of its 
Wood, Uses for which Fit, and Advantages.—Its Productiveness 
and Famed Elasticity.—Its Foliage and Fruit Described.—States 
best Suited to its Thrift.—Difference of Bearing of the Male and 
the Female Tree.—A Fruitful Yield. 
Tus tree is found chiefly in the rich bottom-lands of 
Louisiana, Texas, and New Mexico, where it reaches the 
height of from twenty-five to thirty-five feet. The wood, 
which takes a beautiful polish, and is easily mistaken for 
satin-wood, is hard, tough, and very elastic, and, strange 
to say, is incorruptible, a rotten stick of Osage orange 
being never seen; though it will waste away, it will 
never rot. In color it is of a bright yellow, and is fit 
for any purpose where lumber is exposed to changes of 
weather, as it does not shrink nor swell on exposure to 
water or heat. 
In a few years a plantation of Osage orange-trees 
would reproduce itself. It is so pregnant with suckers 
that, like the chestnut, the more it is cut down the more 
shoots it will throw out, and thus the Osage plantation 
will grow thicker and thicker. The Osage Indians have 
rendered the wood of the Osage orange famous from 
their skilful use of it in the manufacture of their bows. 
It is a beautiful deciduous tree, and has a smooth, gray- 
ish-yellow bark, and while young has a beautiful round- 
ish appearance; but, like youth and beauty, when old age 
appears it becomes wrinkled in its bark and scraggy in 
its branches. Its foliage is of a beautiful dark green, 
