Osage Trees

I mentioned I hated yardwork, right? I'm quite ready for the winter and the frosty hibernation it brings to all of nature. Unfortunately, between then and now is fall, and a driveway full of Osage Orange fruit, known as hedgeapples.

What are those? The fruit of the tree of the devil, in my opinion. Some people love them, but I'm unimpressed. The wood from these trees is very strong, making for good fences and bows. I've heard from one of our neighbors that the ones lining the west side of our lot are protected, and cannot be cut down. In the spring, all the buds fall off and make a mess of our driveway. I used the blower to clear them off every day, a task that Aaron thought to be futile. In the fall, these trees litter the ground with endless hedgeapples. The squirrels go crazy for them, and will carry many of the early ones off the driveway. They are mostly inedible for humans, but they are known to ward off spiders and other insects if you place them in your window and near doors.

These are the bane of my existence from September to November. When they hit the ground, they usually remain intact, but when they split open they are a slimy mess. If we don't get them off the driveway, we end up with mounds of goo everywhere. Last year I had an afternoon ritual of removing them from our driveway every day when I got home from work. I kept count of how many I cleared until I got to 200. By then it was just depressing.

One last fun fact about these trees is that when they are first growing, they have thorns like you wouldn't believe, making clearing out of hundreds of square feet of honeysuckle all the more horrible.