An Orange that isn’t Edible

By Kathy Conner Cornell VCE Southside Master Gardener Recently, my husband, his daughter and I visited Red Hill, the plantation owned by Patrick Henry. One of the great things about visiting Red Hill is the magnificent Osage Orange tree. As Dirr states in the Manual of Woody Landscape Plants it is the Granddaddy of Osage Orange Trees. Granddaddy indeed, the tree is over 400 years old. Legend has it that Henry played his fiddle to entertain his grandchildren while sitting under the tree. Osage orange, Maclura pomifera, is native to Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana and Oklahoma. However, it has “naturalized” to most of the areas east of the Mississippi. The tree has a number of unique qualities. First off, it is dioecious meaning, there are female parts on some trees and male parts on the other. If you want to have the orange fruit, you must have a male to service the female that will produce the fruit. Another unique feature are the super thorns that range from ½” to 1” long. When I went back to college for horticulture, my Woodies instructor did landscape design, implementation and maintenance. She often worked in Roland Park, a very upscale area in Baltimore City. The area was laid out by Frederick Law Olmstead, the designer of Central Park in New York. Less desirable neighborhoods were encroaching on this area. Karen’s answer to help secure the Roland Park properties was to use osage orange with its thorns to stop intruders in their wake. Although the tree is not that desirable for forestry programs, native peoples used the tree for bow making thus another common name was bowwood. The wood is rather orangy in color so has been used for dyes. The fruit is spherical and is useful for Christmas decorations. The tree has few pests. It grows in most soils. It prefers full sun but can take some shade although this sometimes impacts the growth of thorns. Is it a great landscape plant – yes in certain situations especially considering the thorns. Also noted: this is not to be confused with Hardy Orange, Poncirtus trifoliata, which Jennifer Gagnon so ably covered in her column You Ain’t from Around Here in the Virginia Forest Landowner Update, Summer 2025 edition. If you have an area that tends to be a little wilder, osage orange might be a fun tree to try.