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bois d'arc, hedge-apple, Osage-orange

Habit Trees, to 20 m. Bark dark orange-brown, shallowly furrowed, ridges flat, often peeling into long, thin strips.
Branchlets

greenish yellow, becoming orange-brown;

thorns stout, straight, to 1.5 cm, usually lateral to spur branch, spur branches often paired.

Buds

often paired, larger one red-brown, globose, 1.5-2 mm;

scales ciliate;

leaf scars half round, bundle scars arranged in oval.

Leaves

blade 4-12 × 2-6 cm, base rounded, apex acuminate;

surfaces abaxially pale, glabrate, midrib and veins pubescent, adaxially lustrous, glabrous, midrib somewhat pubescent.

Staminate flowers

sepals distinct, yellow-green, ca. 1 mm, apex acute, pubescent;

filaments ca. 2 mm, closely appressed to sepals, flattened.

Pistillate flowers

sepals green, obovate, 3 mm, enclosing and closely appressed to ovary, hoodlike, ciliate near tip;

ovary ovoid, compressed, ca. 1 mm;

style base green, ca. 3 mm, branches 4-6 mm, glabrous;

stigma yellowish, papillose.

Seeds

cream colored, oval to oblong, 8-12 × 5-6 mm, base truncate or rounded with 1-3 minute points, margins with narrow groove, apex rounded, mucronate;

surfaces minutely striated or pitted.

Staminate

inflorescences clustered on lateral spur branches;

peduncle 1-1.5 cm, pubescent;

heads globose or cylindric, 1.3-2.3 cm;

pedicels 2-10 mm, glabrate.

Pistillate

inflorescences: peduncle 2-2.5 mm, glabrous or pubescent;

heads globose, sessile on obconic receptacle, to 1.5 cm diam.

Syncarps

yellow-green to green, spheric, surface irregular, exuding milky sap when broken, peduncle short, glabrous or pubescent;

achenes completely covered by accescent, thickened calyx lobes and deeply embedded in receptacle.

Maclura pomifera

Phenology Flowering spring.
Habitat Thickets
Elevation 0-1500 m (0-4900 ft)
Distribution
from FNA
AL; AR; CT; DC; DE; FL; GA; IA; IL; IN; KS; KY; LA; MA; MD; MI; MO; MS; NC; NE; NJ; NM; NY; OH; OK; PA; RI; SC; SD; TN; TX; VA; WI; WV
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Discussion

Maclura pomifera is native to southwestern Arkansas, southeastern Oklahoma, and Texas; it is introduced and naturalized elsewhere in the United States. Collections in California, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Washington appear to represent isolated escapes.

Maclura pomifera has been widely used in fencerows on farms and along roadways in the midwest and eastern states as windbreaks and wildlife shelter.

The Comanches used Maclura pomifera as an eye medication (D. E. Moerman 1986).

(Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.)

Source FNA vol. 3.
Parent taxa Moraceae > Maclura
Synonyms Ioxylon pomiferum, Ioxylon aurantiacum, M. aurantiaca
Name authority (Rafinesque) C. K. Schneider: Ill. Handb. Laubholzk. 1: 806. (1906)
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