The Osage Orange

As stated it is tough to cut up nice, will burn the bottom out of a wood stove when well seasoned. Osage Orange was planted by the millions in the wind breaks of the dust bowl era. Lucky you will be if you can find some made into a fence post that crosses a wet spot and has been in place for 50 years. The colors will include several shades of green with the yellow. It is used also in duck calls. Now they are being bull-dozed out of the fence rows and burned. My rescued piece was given to a guy to make me a matching duck call and knife and he moves out of the state with it and no contact for me. He can keep the stockman if I could just have the half post back. 300
 
300Bucks said:
As stated it is tough to cut up nice, will burn the bottom out of a wood stove when well seasoned. Osage Orange was planted by the millions in the wind breaks of the dust bowl era. Lucky you will be if you can find some made into a fence post that crosses a wet spot and has been in place for 50 years. The colors will include several shades of green with the yellow. It is used also in duck calls. Now they are being bull-dozed out of the fence rows and burned. My rescued piece was given to a guy to make me a matching duck call and knife and he moves out of the state with it and no contact for me. He can keep the stockman if I could just have the half post back. 300
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If your looking for some osage wood it grows native in the region here ( red river watershed between ok and tx). Roughly a 2 years ago i came across a fallen fairly straight tree trunk that has been dead for 20 to 30 years based on surface cracking, lack of any remaining sapwood, and the dirt/growing things inside the upward facing cracks. I was looking for bow wood but there was too much grain twist or interior knots through most of it. It was 6 foot long, 13 to 14 inch diameter but now in smaller pieces due to splitting and searching. If you wish i can send pounds of well seasoned outdoor air dried osage for your cost in shipping.
 
Hamsco-as far as the picture of that tree all i can say is-gimme! gimme! gimme! anyone lookin' for oo can come to nebraska. it's true about the firewood bundles, and they had an article sometime back in the local paper about the high incidence of hundred year old fence post 50 minutes from town. somebody, rancher or farmer had all of their sections posted with it. a section is a square mile.
thanks, Neal
p.s. somebody, maybe a maker take Herektir up on that-that's the deal of the month!
 
neal70 said:
Hamsco-as far as the picture of that tree all i can say is-gimme! gimme! gimme! anyone lookin' for oo can come to nebraska. it's true about the firewood bundles, and they had an article sometime back in the local paper about the high incidence of hundred year old fence post 50 minutes from town. somebody, rancher or farmer had all of their sections posted with it. a section is a square mile.
thanks, Neal
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Yep, common tree in Nebraska. I'd venture to guess we have 5+ linear miles worth of Osage fence posts on our land. Many old timers around here say the wood lasts one year longer than stone...

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neal70 said:
Hamsco-as far as the picture of that tree all i can say is-gimme! gimme! gimme! anyone lookin' for oo can come to nebraska. it's true about the firewood bundles, and they had an article sometime back in the local paper about the high incidence of hundred year old fence post 50 minutes from town. somebody, rancher or farmer had all of their sections posted with it. a section is a square mile.
thanks, Neal
p.s. somebody, maybe a maker take Herektir up on that-that's the deal of the month!
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I don't think anyone is gonna cut that tree down anytime soon. It is in the middle of Old Louisville. I pity the chain saw that pulls that job.
 
It not only tends to badly dull a chainsaw blade, when the tree is green it glues the chain to the bar making a sticky mess. Had a green tree cut up with a 7 foot straight section of trunk that had recently fallen which glued the chain to the bar badly enough that it froze the chain completely. That trunk is split into quarters still drying in a hay barn.
 
My regular carry osage
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When I lived in St Louis, I had a row of mature trees at the back of my lot. That was before I learned how good this wood is, I wish I had taken some.
 
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I must have missed this thread the first time around. I love the looks of Osage Orange but being an Australian I had never seen the tree or the fruit it produces, which makes this thread super interesting for me. Thanks for the cool knives and factoids on a fascinating tree.
 
Interestingly, those huge fruits the tree produces are that way to tempt the now extinct megafauna of the ice age, like mammoths and mastodons, to eat them. The O-O fruits would then pass through the mastodon and be dropped somewhere, so a new tree could sprout. After the extinction of the big megafauna post ice age, nothing was left that ate those road apples anymore, and the O-O trees became more and more isolated in their range, ultimately being limited to the Red River Valley and surrounding region, until Europeans showed up.
Why do the O-O trees still go to the effort of producing a fruit that nothing eats anymore, dooming them, absent some other factor, to a smaller and smaller range?
It's because the trees have been slow to catch on; a natural consequence of the pace of evolution. For a tree that lives, say, 250 years, 13,000 years represents only 52 generations. In an evolutionary sense, the trees don’t yet realize that the megafauna are gone.
However, if a new ice age developed, and a six ton mammoth were to reappear and wander into Oklahoma, there'd be a food source ready and waiting to keep the big hairy beast well fed and fat.
 
picturerock said:
Interestingly, those huge fruits the tree produces are that way to tempt the now extinct megafauna of the ice age, like mammoths and mastodons, to eat them. The O-O fruits would then pass through the mastodon and be dropped somewhere, so a new tree could sprout. After the extinction of the big megafauna post ice age, nothing was left that ate those road apples anymore, and the O-O trees became more and more isolated in their range, ultimately being limited to the Red River Valley and surrounding region, until Europeans showed up.
Why do the O-O trees still go to the effort of producing a fruit that nothing eats anymore, dooming them, absent some other factor, to a smaller and smaller range?
It's because the trees have been slow to catch on; a natural consequence of the pace of evolution. For a tree that lives, say, 250 years, 13,000 years represents only 52 generations. In an evolutionary sense, the trees don’t yet realize that the megafauna are gone.
However, if a new ice age developed, and a six ton mammoth were to reappear and wander into Oklahoma, there'd be a food source ready and waiting to keep the big hairy beast well fed and fat.
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There's got to be several different animals that still eat them. Where I live these trees are everywhere - on my way to work I drive under several holding by breath that one doesn't come down on me... especially when I'm on a motorcycle! I have seen squirrels eat these and they will shred them to a flat pile fairly quick. The other animal that spreads these around a fair amount is human children - they are the perfect throwing size for kids out playing :) I have seen people collect a few of these and leave them on their patio thinking it repels mosquitoes. I don't think that's true, but people have told me it works.
 
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