Re: OT: Bois d'Arc

In a message dated 6/6/00 8:49:10 AM Eastern Daylight Time, bills@hsc.edu 
writes:

<< Not far from here at Red Hill Plantation, P. Henry's old place (he's buried
 there), stands a world-record Osage Orange, a magnificent spreading
 specimen that has spent its entire 250 or so years in the open.  >>

Odd that this should come up now. June 6 is the anniversary of Patrick 
Henry's death.

Thomas Jefferson liked the trees, too. And here in town there is a group of 
fellows who have a poker club that goes back to prep school or college, I 
forget which, anyway, they play cards only in the cooler months and the 
revels begin anew when the first member of the club finds the first osage 
orange on the ground in the autumn. I think that is a nice, poetic sort of 
thing.

Walta, we don't call them 'horse apples', we call them 'mock oranges.' They 
are very easy from seed, although extricating the seed from the fruit is a 
stainy mess. People used to sow them in drills to get a fast growing thorny 
hedgerow and you still see some along fencelines and the like. I always try 
to find a few of the grannysmithapple green fruits to have in a bowl in the 
fall just to look at but now that they have gone and prissified the back 
parking area behind the headquarters of the Garden Club of Virginia I'm not 
sure where I'm going to get some. I'll find them.

Here are some places to learn more about the Osage Orange.

http://www.oplin.lib.oh.us/products/tree/factpages/osageo/osageo.html

http://www.gpnc.org/osage.htm

http://www.uaex.edu/newsweb/articles/plant58.htm  

Anner, in Virginia
ChatOWhitehall@aol.com  

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Old school buds here:
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