Maclura pomifera

[lewisjk]

My Osage orange (Maclura pomifera) has leafed out nicely this year.

This is an interesting tree for bonsai. Its wood is extremely dense and heavy -- and hard; you will ruin a circular saw trying to cut it, and as I found out when I chopped this one, it is almost impossible to cut with a hand saw. The wood is a deep orange, and is much loved by sculptors. The Osage Indians used its wood for bows -- though I can't imagine drawing it.

It has nasty thorns, and was used by farmers all over the midwest in fence rows before and then in lieu of barbed wire. It is native to Arkansas, Oklahoma and northern Texas, but has been planted thoughout the Midwest and southeastern USA.

As far as I know, I'm the first to use it for bonsai, though a few others have since tried it. I purchased several seedlings from Musser Forests this spring and hope to have at least one other bonsai before too many more years pass. They grow fast.

This one grew for 5-6 years along my drive in Tallahassee, FL before moving into a bonsai pot in 1999.

[BillsBayou]

Thanks for posting this. I'm curious about wiring the branches. With the wood so dense, do you have much success trying to move a branch? Or are you better off cutting off the branch and hoping another will grow there?

[lewisjk]

Wiring is always a problem. I wire when it is leafless; that's the only time I can see (and miss) the spines! Branches thicker than a plain wooden pencil are impossible to wire, so if I didn't wire them when they were matchstick size, they don't get wired. The smaller branches wire fairly well, though. I keep wires on over winter, and take them off just as leaves start to appear (again so I can avoid the spines -- though I try to cut as many as I can off over the winter. They're easy to miss, though -- except when you are working on the tree.).