Osage Orange Hedge Row Tree & Historical Significance

The Osage orange tree, once a favorite of American settlers, deserves a look from modern-day homesteaders.

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by Adobestock/Dee

“Good fences make good neighbors,” wrote poet Robert Frost. But what, exactly, makes a good fence?

If you’ve ever had the dubious pleasure of putting a fence up — of cutting, splitting and setting posts and stretching wire — you just might answer, “A fence that builds itself.” And since you’re fantasizing, you might add, “…and takes care of itself, too.”

Well, believe it or not, there is such a fence. Chances are you’ve seen one while driving along rural roads and looking out over neat hedgerow-lined fields. During the latter half of the nineteenth century and the first few decades of this one — up until the time barbed wire became widely available and inexpensive — settlers and farmers throughout much of the eastern half of the United States planted their fences.

Tree With Small Round Green Balls

More often than not, the tree they used was the Osage orange tree, sometimes also called prairie hedge, hedge apple, horse apple, bowwood or yellow-wood. Most folks today, though, know it only for its distinctly ugly, small, round green balls: an inedible, fleshy green orb the size of a grapefruit or large orange, with a warty, furrowed surface sparsely covered with long, coarse hairs. When you break the globe open, it exudes a bitter, milky, sticky sap that eventually turns black and gives some people an irritating rash.

  • Updated on Feb 4, 2024
  • Originally Published on Mar 1, 1985
Tagged with: hedge, Hedge Apple, maclura, Osage orange, planting, robert frost
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