Hedge Apple

[Stroby]

Question: Does anyone else use hedge apples to kill/deter bugs in their outbuildings? I have been placing a few by the doors in my pole buildings during the winter and after a while there a a heck of a lot of dead bugs laying all around them.

 

[Mike(NEOhio)]

What are hedge apples? I'm thinking osage oranges.

 

[Tom in TN]

Mike,

That's exactly right - they're Osage Orange fruit. Here in the south they are called Bodock trees. I understand that's an Anglicanism for the French name Bois d'Arc. Supposedly, the wood was used to form bows for use with bows and arrows.

Stroby,

I've heard the same thing but I've never tried to use them as an insect killer/repellant. My brother-in-law lives in Minnesota. Depending on the time of year that he is down here, he picks up a few of them and takes them home with him. He says they work to repel bugs. The danged trees are a menace and they are all over in this area.

Tom in TN

 

[craigco]

Dad used to put them in front of the house. For some reason box elder bugs would cover the front of the house. Can't say it helped much. Had to use the back door most of the summer.

 

[Brendon-KS]

Same here - osage orange trees (we just call them hedge trees) grow like weeds. Makes great firewood for the stove, though!

 

[Richard G.]

We have a friend in Kansas that burns it to heat his home.
Richard in NW SC

 

[Brendon-KS]

The heat output from hedge is amazing but a person has to be careful about the sparks. Not a good wood for an open fireplace!

 

[Geo-TH,In]

Used them once. They rot very fast.

 

[rossow (mn)]

I try to pick up a sackful of hedge apples (osage orange fruit) when I travel through Kansas to and from the Tulsa gun show in the fall. I put them in strategic places around my house and breezeway, and they seem to do a great job of keeping wispy spiders at bay. Local (southern MN) grocery stores sell them for $1 each in the fall as spider repellents. Many people leave them in their cabins up north over the winter.

 

[kcm.MN]

I have little experience with the fruit, so did not know it deterred/killed bugs. Will have to check into that.

When I was active woodworking, I ended up with a piece of Osage Orange, but at the time didn't know what I had. A bit of research had my woodworking juices flowing.

As mentioned, Osage Orange wood was used for making bows, and a few people still make bows. But the really neat part is that no finish is necessary. To finish the wood, simply wet sand on the final sanding. The mixture of water and fine sawdust would bring a lasting sheen to the wood.

 

[da.bees]

If I had a stand that grew straight like Pine does I would be wealthy. No wood come's close to strength and longivity(including treated of any sort). Fence posts my Grandfather set over 100 years ago are still standing strong.

 

[Charles in Aus.]

The fruit of these trees are called ' Monkey Brains ' down here , at least that's what we called them as kids .
There is a chemical constituent to them called Elemol that is indeed a deterrent to many species of insect , so it's not just an old wives tale .

 

[Stroby]

Same here.

 

[JDB]

Where I grew up they wete used for fence posts. Crooked as a dog's hind leg but they did not rot. Some of those posts were 100 plus years old. And thevolder they were the harder it was to put a fence staple in

 

[da.bees]

Around Tx,Ok & La stores stock 3/4 & 1 staples specificly for Hedge Apple posts because it's so difficult to drive regular staples in them. We have more problems in controling Cedar,Locust and Persimmon than Hedge Apple. Hedge is easy to uproot and rarly sprout's from roots. The others snap off and require more time to get stump out leaving roots that sprout pups. Many farmsteads have left Hedge trees for shade and many can be seen in yards of prestigous neighborhoods in Dallas.

 

[cdmn]

Is there somewhere I could buy short sticks to use in wood turning projects, or are they
hard to process?

 

[T in NE]

It's more dense than hickory and locust.

 

[T in NE]

I know someone whose parents, rookies at heating with wood, loaded up a cast iron stove with hedge, not knowing what it was.

They had every window in the house open, slept in shifts, and had the water hose hooked up in case the glowing red stove lit the floor joists above it that night.

 

[davyfireball]

Mice will eat a hedge apples - thats what my dad said Im 70

 

[David from Kansas]

About the comment on osage orange trees being easy to uproot and easy to kill is not true of the ones we have here. They will take over a pasture or uncultivated field in just a few years. I have to constantly cut the young seedlings I find in my pastures, and have to treat the stumps with a stump killer like tordon RTU or they will immediately grow back. I once watched a neighbor doze out all the trees in a heavily infested pasture and it was completely covered again in about 3-4 years. It all came back from the roots left in the ground. I will grant though, that they are pretty shallow rooted but the roots spread out widely from the tree and are hard to kill. Have killed some smaller trees growing in the roadside ditches with glyphosate but had to put on a pretty heavy dose of highly concentrated mixture. We still have lots of hedge rows here that were planted long before I can remember and I am near 80. They were used for a natural fence hedge as they are extremely thorny. When I was a kid our entire 160 acre farm had a hedge row completely around the perimeter. Anyone need some hedge apples? I would be glad to gather you a few and send them if you would pay the shipping.

 

[jh105]

Your neighbor had good intentions, but definitely went about the wrong way. When trying to clean up a pasture I try to make sure they are good and dead from chemical applications before cutting or dozing. An old timer here in se Kansas once told me if you kill one, ten will come to its funeral . They sprout back up from the remaining roots.