Sun or partial shade. Deciduous. Osage is a medium sized tree typically branching short on the trunk with a wide and round or irregular crown. The plant is unrelated to citrus. The dense wood resists rot, prized for use as tool handles and fenceposts and (by Native Americans) for bows. Mature trees may bear stout spines at the bases of some leaves, but young plants can be very thorny and were planted as living fences across the American grasslands before the invention of barbed wire.
The female tree’s brainlike green fruits are attention-getters, littering the ground under mature trees in autumn and oozing milky latex when damaged. The fruits are not poisonous, but they are not tasty either, and they are not preferred by humans or livestock. They do, however, attract squirrels. The tuberculated surface of each “orange” is in fact a cluster of hundreds of smaller fruits. Male trees have been preferred for residential use because they do not produce the hedgeballs.
The tree’s original native range was probably fairly small, around the Red River drainage in Oklahoma, Louisiana and Texas, possibly down into the Blackland Prairie. It has been widely cultivated since European settlement and is the single most-planted tree in North America.
Prune to develop a treelike form and manage the fast-growing thorny branches and suckers. Trees can grow quite large — too large for planting beneath power lines — but they normally branch just 5′ above the ground — something to consider if it is intended as a shade tree. Osage orange grows best in full sun on well-drained soil, but it is quite adaptable.
Stout thorns were once a handy stand-in for barbed wire.