The Volta Park Osage Orange

No Osage orange in Washington's tree inventory comes anywhere near this one. In Volta Park, on 34th Street in Georgetown, it measures about 145 centimetres across at chest height, roughly 4.6 metres round. The other Osage oranges growing around it, and there are several, run from about 50 to 97 centimetres. That is a big trunk for the species. Osage orange is a tough, thorny tree from the south-central United States, better known for its heavy green fruit and rot-proof wood than for its size, and few grow this broad. So the figure deserves a caveat. It is an arborist's measurement in the city's own records, and those records do not say whether the trunk is a single stem or several grown together. Until somebody checks, read it as a measurement of what stands there, not a claim about a single trunk. The tree has had its knocks. It lost a branch about ten centimetres thick in the January 2025 snowstorm, and at its last inspection, in August 2026, it was rated Fair. Laser survey fields in the record give the crown a height of about 19 metres. Volta Park is a short walk from Montrose Park and Dumbarton Oaks Park, which makes this an easy addition to a Georgetown tree walk. The city's inventory is the only source, and it gives no planting date. Nobody knows how old these Osage oranges are, or why a group of them grows here. If you do, tell us.