MULBERRY FAMILY 
must bear alternations of wet and dry, or is brought iuco 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 ts 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 calla 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 dicecious, the pistillate tree even when iso- 
lated will bear large oranges, perfect to the sight but lacking 
the seeds. ‘he 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, 
20°. 
