We talk a lot about how native plants are great choices for our landscapes, but one of our native plants…a tree to be exact…we don’t hear much about is the hedge apple. In fact, I don’t remember ever seeing hedge apple trees in our local nurseries. Have I looked for them, no. But I am in local garden centers fairly often and don’t remember seeing one for sale. Maybe it’s because their fruits are fairly substantial and for the most part inedible since I’ve read they taste terrible. But how did we come to have so many of them across the countryside?

Hedge apple is just one of the names for these trees. You might have heard them called horse apples, bois d’arc, monkey brains, monkey ball, yellow-wood, mock orange, or Osage orange. Interestingly, they are not members of the apple or orange family and definitely not members of the monkey family. They are however members of the mulberry family. For now, let’s just call them hedge apples.

As you might deduce from the name, it turns out early settlers would plant rows of hedge apples to serve as a fence between their livestock and their vegetable gardens. This was primarily because hedge apple trees have thorns. This practice continued until barbed wire was invented in 1874. But even after that, hedge apple wood was often used as fence posts for the barbed wire likely due to the strength of their wood and their natural resistance to wood rot. I read that when making a fence using hedge apple wood, you needed to use the wood while it was still green because once the wood aged, it was hard to get the staples into the wood to hold the barbed wire.

Bois d’arc is French which translates into bow wood. Apparently, this wood was so strong, flexible, and durable that it became a prized wood for bows. Recorded history tells us that a Scottish botanist traveling in the United States in the early 19^th century, recorded that a bow made for bois d’arc wood could be traded for a horse and a blanket. That sounds pretty valuable to me. Today you might see duck calls made from hedge apple tree wood.

Hedge apple tree wood is yellow when first cut but will change color to a medium brown when it’s exposed to sunlight. When used for firewood, if it is allowed to dry properly, it is one of the hottest burning woods available.

Hedge apple trees can become rather sizable, growing to between 40 and 60 feet tall and living for nearly 250 years. George Washington’s River Farm in Alexandria, Virginia is home to the largest known example of a hedge apple as it rises 58 feet into the air with a spread of approximately 90 feet. Historians best guess is that this tree is at least 200 years old.

Interestingly, sometime in the 1930s the Works Progress Administration set out on a project to plant hedge apple trees as a way to reduce soil erosion. Because of this, thousands of miles of hedge apple trees were planted as part of this project. Hedge apple trees are native to Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Texas, but because of this project, they can be found in all the continental United States.

Now I am guessing most of us would not easily recognize a hedge apple tree if it weren’t for its fruit. These fruits are hard to miss since they grow to between 4 and 6 inches in diameter and are a distinctive light green color. After ripening, the fruits fall to the ground.

As far as the nickname “monkey brains” goes, the rough, textured surface of the fruit is probably how they got that name. Interestingly, the rough surface of the hedge apple fruit is actually made up of a bunch of small, seeded fruits that have grown together in the shape of a ball.

While these fruits are fairly harmless, they do contain a milky juice that can irritate the skin so if you are handling one of the fruits, be sure to wear gloves. Folklore tells us that the fruits are poisonous to livestock, but several studies have said that this is false, although they do seem to pose a bit of a choking hazard if livestock were to eat them.

While most find the fruits from hedge apple trees inedible, squirrels can break them apart to eat the pulp and seeds. Some birds will eat the fruit if they happen upon a hedge apple fruit that has been broken open. And white-tailed deer, mainly bucks are known to eat the fruits as well.

So now you know. See you in the garden!

You can get answers to all your gardening questions by calling the Tulsa Master Gardeners Help Line at 918-746-3701, dropping by our Diagnostic Center at 4116 E. 15th Street, or by emailing us at mg@tulsamastergardeners.org. Photo: Rebekah D. Wallace, University of Georgia, Bugwood.org