THE OSAGE ORANGE. Toxylon pormferuin, Raff.
Related to figs and mulberries, but solitary in the genus toxylon, is the osage orange, a handsome round-headed tree, native of eastern North America, whose fleshy roots and milky, bitter, rubbery sap reveal its family connec tions with the tropical rubber plants. (See illustration, page 119.) The fruits are great yellow-green globes, four to five inches in diameter, covered on the outside by crowded, one-seeded berries. This compound fruit reveals the tree's relationship to both figs and mulberries.
The aborigines, especially of the Osage tribe, in the middle Mississippi Valley, cherished these trees for their orange-yellow wood, which is hard, heavy, flexible, and strong—the best bow-wood to be found east of the Rocky Mountains. When the settlers came the sharp thorns with which the branches are effectually armed appealed strongly to the busy farmers a-nd the tree was widely planted for hedges. Nurserymen produced them by thousands, from cuttings of root and branch. These trees made rapid growth and seemed most promising as a solu tion of the fencing problem, but they did not prove hardy in Iowa and neighboring states. Even now remnants of those old winter-killed hedges may be found on farm boundaries, individual trees having been able to survive.
The native osage orange timber is about all gone, for the rich bottom lands where it once grew most abundantly in Oklahoma and Texas have been converted into farm land.
However, the growing of osage orange timber for posts is on the increase. Systematically maintained, plantations pay well. The wood is exceptionally durable in soil. Good prices are paid for posts in local markets. Twenty five posts can be grown to the rod in rows of a plantation; they grow rapidly and send up new shoots from the roots.
The brilliant, leathery leaves and conspicuous green fruits make this native bow-wood a very striking lawn tree. It holds its foliage well into the autumn and turns at length into a mass of gold. It harbors few insects, has handsome bark, and is altogether a distinguished, foreign looking tree.
Experiments of feeding osage orange leaves to silkworms have been successfully made at different times, but no where in America has silk culture succeeded. Since the white mulberry is hardy here and its foliage is the basis of the silk-growing industry in the Old World, it is futile to look for substitutes in the osage orange or any other tree.