35-60' x same. Also called Hedge Apple, Bois d’Arc or Bodark.
Fantastical native shade tree with a wide spreading canopy over a short eccentric trunk. The mature tree can live for hundreds of years and develop a surreal orange-brown bark with extreme fissures and gnarly knobby lumps that look like they are melting over themselves. Strong wood is orange and rivals black locust in rot resistance. Traditionally used for fence posts and bows or as a hedge plant before the invention of barbed wire. Keep it short and it will sucker freely with severe thorns sure to keep out all trespassers while allowing birds and migrating critters to take shelter. Neon-green grapefruit-sized fruits have a strange bumpy texture and ooze a sticky latex. Not palatable to humans but could be consumed by cattle or horses (nontoxic but may pose a choking hazard due to size).
Fossilized pollen records indicate a once extensive native range in North America when the megafauna who might have ingested its large fruit roamed the continent dispersing its seed. Now mostly found in river valleys of the Midwest and South. Prefers full to part sun and moist well-drained soil, but once established it is adaptable to a wide range of conditions including drought, clay, cold and pollution.
Dioecious unsexed seedlings. The females bear the fruit so plant more than one to increase chances of a yield. Seed collected in Maine. Z4. Indigenous Royalties. (1-3' bare-root plants)
BACK!