You may have noticed the large, wrinkled, green “oranges” recently, littering the ground around big barren trees or, almost impossibly, still tenaciously clinging to scraggly, leafless limbs. As a kid, you may have chunked more than your fair share at a neighborhood nemesis. You may have called them horse apples and, if you were ever tempted to bite into one, you quickly learned your lesson. They may be tasty to squirrels, but most assuredly are not for human consumption. These lumpy, bumpy spheres are the fruit of the bois d’arc tree or, as more commonly pronounced in these here parts, the “bodark” tree. In other parts of the country it’s also known as an Osage orange tree or hedge apple tree. The name bois d’arc came courtesy of French explorers who saw Native Americans using the tree’s springy branches to launch their arrows. Bois d’arc—bow wood.
Meriwether Lewis, of Lewis and Clark expedition fame, helped launch the tree’s legacy as the pre-cursor to barbed wire. As part of his goals for the expedition, President Thomas Jefferson tasked Meriwether with recording “‘the soil & face of the country, it’s (sic) growth & vegetable productions, especially those not of the U.S. [and] the dates at which particular plants put forth or lose their flower, or leaf.’”
As described by Smithsonian Magazine:
“The Osage orange, which Lewis obtained from Pierre Chouteau, a former Indian agent, was probably the expedition’s most significant botanical discovery. The plant’s long thorns created a virtually impenetrable hedge, and later in the 19th century, many thousands of miles of these trees would be planted as frontier fencing. The fragrant tree held its popularity as a barrier until it was eclipsed by barbed wire in the 1880s.”
A San Antonio Express-News article on the bois d’arc offers a Texas angle to the tree’s legacy as a thorny hedge that retained livestock while keeping predators away:
“Texas historian Walter Prescott Webb described the market for bois d’arc seeds for growing hedges in his 1931 book The Great Plains. In 1860 alone, enough seed to grow 300 million plants was exported from Texas and elsewhere to the prairie states where they provided enough trees for some 60,000 miles of hedges.
“The market for bois d’arc seeds quickly collapsed by around 1880, when barbed wire fencing took over. But although the bois d’arc was no longer in demand for hedges, the resistance of the wood to rot made the trees prized posts for barbed wire fences.”
Bows, hedges, posts. What can’t a bois d’arc tree do (other than produce a tasty fruit)? A former carpenter in the Texas Panhandle sheds additional insight:
“…if cut into blocks it makes long-lasting paving or sidewalk surface. Before concrete was available many frontier frame houses were built using bodark or cedar posts as foundations. I once remodeled an old ranch house at Goodnight which was believed to be more than 100 years old. The bodark stump foundation was firm as ever with very little rot.
“Lore says to throw a number of bodark apples underneath the floors of your house to get rid of spiders and other pests. We tried it but noticed no difference. Maybe we did not use enough. Some elders swear it works.”
The Dirt Doctor expands a bit on this pest control lore:
“The use of the hedge apples for insect control is one of the most enduring pest management home remedies. Placement of hedge apples around the foundation or inside the basement is claimed to provide relief from cockroaches, spiders, boxelder bugs, crickets and other pests. Although insect deterrent compounds have been extracted from hedge apples in laboratory studies, these do not provide a logical explanation about why hedge apples would work as claimed. Scientific studies have found that extracts of Osage orange do repel several insect species. Various studies have found elemol, an extract of Osage orange, to repel several species of mosquitoes, cockroaches, crickets, and ticks. One study found elemol to be as effective a mosquito repellent as DEET. “
Given the vast and impressive array of benefits why shouldn’t we all be planting bois d’arc trees? If you don’t have bois d’arc on your property but might be enchanted with the idea now, the Dirt Doctor offers the good, the bad, and the ugly of these deciduous, dioecious (male or female) trees that can grow 40 to 60 feet. A few takeaways:
“Bois d’ arc is curious in that it grows very fast and easily, almost weed like, but it is sometimes hard to keep healthy and alive in landscaping. Large chunks of the tree will often die and borers frequently attack the iron-like wood causing further problems. The root system seems shallow and not durable. It does not need very much water although deep soils are much better than shallow rocky soils. It needs little to no fertilizer.
“It is a very messy tree to try to have in a maintained garden. Problems include borers, shallow root system, wind damage, trees falling over in wet soils and other related immune system problems.
“Very easy (to propagate), can be grown from stem cuttings cut from branches or rather large limbs. Can also be grown from the fruit. The fruit can be crushed and the seed after drying can be stratified by soaking in water for 30 days and then planted in the spring…
“Horses actually do eat the fruit, which has caused deaths due to lodging in the animal’s throat. Some people are allergic to the milky sap from the stems, leaves and fruit and develop dermatitis.”
If you’re looking for bois d’arc on your property, the trunks are typically short and the crown is rounded or irregular. In May or June, small green flowers are produced on both male and female trees. Leaves are glossy and dark green on the top and lighter green underneath “turning a clear yellow in the fall.” As further described by Texas A&M Forest Service: “The twigs are armed with stout, straight thorns and produce a sticky, milky sap when broken.” But if you’re looking now, in December, the tell-tale fruit which began ripening earlier in the fall on the female trees and have now dropped to the ground should help you identify this storied tree.
