Trees

There’s an enormous honey locust tree in our back yard, way back in the corner and too far away to hurt anyone with the colossal thorns that bristle along its trunk and branches. Owing to it’s shape, it wouldn’t be much of a climbing tree, but the thorns - which can and have punctured mower and tractor tires - seal the deal. Stay away, unless you’re a squirrel. It’s a nice looking tree. The leaves are lacy and small and it turns a lovely yellow in the fall. It also produces long bean-pod looking things as its main fruit. The pods, or at least the goo inside, is said to be edible and are what give the tree its name. I just run them over with the mower and chop them up, but they originally evolved to feed large animals which no longer exist on our continent.

Same as the Osage oranges, which are those knobbly looking green softballs that are all over the place along the greenway this time of the year. I was amazed the first time I saw them and immediately disappointed to learn that they are not edible. They’re not much good for anything, though I read somewhere that if you put the fruit under your bed it will repel spiders. We haven’t tried this yet, so your mileage may vary. Both the honey locust and the Osage orange (also called hedge apple) developed their fruits to be consumed by the megafauna which used to roam our landscape but faded away a long time ago. The fruit would be gobbled up in one place and the seeds passed out somewhere else. Avocados were distributed the same way. Making giant fruit with a single seed in the middle takes a lot of energy, which means the tree was counting on something which would take windfall or ripened fruit elsewhere. Not at all like maples, which cast their seeds on wings every time the wind picks up.

For what it’s worth, I did my part to try to make up for the lost megafauna. I brought home a couple of Osage oranges from the greenway and chucked them into a few spots here and there around the yard. Nothing happened, but I’m not about to attempt their customary pathway. Maybe I’ll try burying them a little next time.

Other tree updates: new Pistache trees are settling in well. The weather has been relatively mild and pretty wet, so I know they’re getting plenty of water. The quince and medlar trees are supposed to ship in late winter, around February. At the longtime request of my wife, we also added a dogwood - ‘Cherokee Brave,’ which is one of the darker pink varieties. It’s likewise doing well out front so we have high hopes for this spring.