Editor's note: This article by the late Dr. Fred Tarpley, author of Wood Eternal, was originally published July 29, 2011.

Jerry Lytle, a Hopkins County resident, and Jim Conrad and Fred Tarpley, Hunt County residents, made a point of passing these tips along when visiting the headquarters of the Osage nation, especially because the Osage orange tree was named for the Indians and for the Osage River. Other common names of the tree are hedge apple, and bow wood. Bois d’arc is the dominant name in Texas.

Here are ten basic questions about the extraordinary tree.  Answers follow.

1.      Who introduced the tree outside Indian lands?

2.      Who was the first U.S. president to receive seeds and saplings of the tree?

3.      How is biblical Noah linked to the tree?

4.      Can the tree repel insects and other home pests?

5.      How much does one cubic foot of the wood weigh?

6.      How many cleaned seeds fill a bushel basket?

7.      Who first fenced Midwestern prairies with the tree?

8.      What is the relation of the tree to barbed wire?

9.      What was Queen Victoria’s first encounter with the tree?

10.  What are one hundred practical uses of the tree?

Answers:

1.       Meriwether Lewis, beginning his historic expedition with Clark, was introduced to the tree in a St. Louis garden by Peter Chouteau, an Indian trader who said he obtained it from an Osage Indian village.  Lewis wrote Jefferson that he was sending him cuttings and seed from the Osage apple tree.

2.      In a letter dated March 26, 1804, Meriwether Lewis sent President Thomas Jefferson the first known seeds and saplings from St. Louis to the East Coast.  Unfortunately, the shipment could not be propagated, but a later shipment took root.  Benjamin Franklin and George Washington had sought such a tree for hedging, but, alas, both  died before 1804.

3.      After French-speaking explorers in America named the tree bois d’arc (“wood of the ark”) because it was the preferred wood for making a bow (arc in French), the word was confused with Noah’s nautical ark.  Biblical scholars believe that Noah used cypress wood for his ark. 

4.      Experiments in scientific laboratories are confirming the folk beliefs that the fruit of the bois d’arc tree, commonly known as horse apples, emits scents subtle to human noses but devastating to insects, skunks, and armadillos.  Whole horse apples thrown under a structure or placed around an area send the varmints scattering.  Cockroaches, spiders, silverfish, and crickets disappear when horse apples are anywhere nearby.  A highly recommended procedure is to quarter a horse apple, drop the pieces in women's hosiery, and tie it to a nail in a closet or to a pipe under a sink to avoid letting the horse apple come into contact with woodwork it might discolor.  Sawdust from the wood, bark, and roots also repel pests.

5.       Bois d’arc is the densest and heaviest wood in North American.  One cubic foot of wood weighs approximately forty-eight pounds.  The Osage Indians were wise in making it the wood of choice for battle clubs.

6.      Approximately 24,500 cleaned seeds from the horse apple will fill a bushel basket. 

7.      When Jonathan Baldwin Turner arrived in Jacksonville, Illinois, in the 1830s to teach the Classics, he was concerned that lack of timber on the prairie prevented farmers from constructing reliable fences.  After Turner became acquainted with the thorned bois d’arc tree, he conducted experiments to grow a hedge that was “horse high, bull strong, and pig tight.”  In the 1850s Turner declared the bois d’arc superior to all other hedge plants.  Turner was also the prime promoter of land grant colleges.

8.      The bois d’arc tree inspired the invention of barbed wire.  When Joseph Glidden of DeKalb, Illinois, retrieved some chickens from his bois d’arc barnyard fence and scratched his arms on bois d’arc thorns, he paused to wonder, “If there were only some way to attach those thorns to smooth wire.”  Shortly thereafter, Glidden and other inventors filed barbed wire patents, and it was Glidden’s that was recognized.  After 1875 barbed wire had dethroned bois d’arc as the favored fence.  Of course, barbed wire required reliable posts to be strung on, and nothing was better than bois d’arc posts.

9.      Bois d’arc samplings reached England not long after Meriwether Lewis sent his discovery to President Jefferson.  Years later, Queen Victoria was being guided through London’s Kew Gardens by the director, Hugh Hooker.  Smelling the faint fragrance of horse apples being uncrated by an apprentice from Philadelphia, she grasped a plump fruit and bit into it.  As white sap dripped on her royal frock, the queen threw the horse apple to the ground as Hooker said, “I don’t suppose we know how to prepare them properly, but they are considered a great delicacy in America.”  The American apprentice, Thomas Meehans, returned to Philadelphia and published an account of the incident in Meehans’ Monthly in 1893.

10.  Most individuals familiar with bois d’arc can list eight or ten uses, but readers of Wood Eternal discover 115 uses.  Among the best known adaptations of bois d’arc have been for bows, arrows, battle clubs, night sticks, fish knockers, dyes, chuck wagons, crutches, wagon wheels, insect repellants, Christmas decorations, pestles and mortars, pins, eye wash, mouth wash, etc.  That George Washington wore dentures made of bois d’arc is a myth.

      Source:

The answers to all ten of these questions and many more will be found in Fred Tarpley, Wood Eternal:  The Story of Osage Orange, Bois d’Arc, etc.  Campbell, TX: Tarpley Books, 2010.