(urth) The spiny orange - we used to throw the fruit at each other as kids and call them stink bombs.

[Herbert, Joseph]

The spiny orange of Able's bow.    Wolfe has a hand carved walking stick
of osage orange - carved by Joe Mayhew.
Maclura pomifera
>From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Osage-orange, Horse-apple or Bois D'Arc even know as the Drewedic
Bullochus (Maclura pomifera) is dioeceous </wiki/Plant_sexuality>  plant
species, with male and female flowers </wiki/Flower>  on different
plants. It is a small deciduous </wiki/Deciduous>  tree </wiki/Tree>  or
large shrub </wiki/Shrub> , typically growing to 8-15 metres (26-49 ft)
tall. The fruit </wiki/Fruit> , a multiple fruit </wiki/Multiple_fruit>
, is roughly spherical, but bumpy, and 7-15 cm in diameter, and it is
filled with a sticky white latex </wiki/Latex>  sap </wiki/Sap> . In
fall, its color turns a bright yellow-green and it has a faint odor
similar to that of oranges </wiki/Orange_(fruit)> .[1] <> 
The Osage-orange is commonly used as a tree row windbreak
</wiki/Windbreak>  in prairie states, which gives it one of its
colloquial names, "hedge apple".
The trees acquired the name bois d'arc, or "bow-wood", from early French
</wiki/France>  settlers who observed the wood being used for war clubs
and bow-making by Native Americans
</wiki/Native_Americans_in_the_United_States> .[3] <>  Meriwether Lewis
was told that the people of the Osage Nation </wiki/Osage_Nation>
"esteem the wood of this tree for the making of their bows, that they
travel many hundred miles in quest of it." Many modern bowyers assert
the wood of the Osage Orange is superior even to English Yew for this
purpose, though this opinion is by no means unanimous. The trees are
also known as "bordarch" trees, most likely originating from a
corruption of "bois d'arc."


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