In fruit
In late autumn this tree drops what look like green brains onto the path.
Photo: Teresa Grau Ros (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Osage Orange
Maclura pomifera
Every autumn these trees drop green spheres the size of a grapefruit that nothing alive wants to eat. We map 7 of them, in 5 cities.
The fruit of Maclura pomifera looks like a brain, weighs a kilo or more and seems to have been built for animals that vanished from North America thousands of years ago. The tree takes its name from the Osage nation, who made bows from the wood, which was traded far beyond their own territory. American farmers then found a second use: planted close and cut back, osage orange grows into a thorn hedge nothing can push through, and thousands of miles of it went in through the 1850s until barbed wire made it pointless. Abroad it is a curiosity: Caserta's has grown in a royal garden for about 200 years, and Melbourne's has stood beside the Yarra since the 1860s. Stand under one in November and watch your head.
Barcelona
Before barbed wire, this tree was the fence.
The city catalogued fourteen trees here as one.
Lyon
This tree's American ancestors were weapons before they were shade.
Photo: Krzysztof Golik (CC BY 4.0)
Melbourne
Yarra Boulevard was built to give men work during the Depression.
Caserta
In fruit
The best bow wood in North America grows in a royal garden outside Naples.
Toulouse
This tree drops fruit that nothing alive is meant to eat.
Explore by city: Barcelona · Lyon · Melbourne · Caserta · Toulouse · Prague · Brussels · Porto · every city · or browse all species.