I've passed these before in my travels and never really paid much attention to them, but this particular sunny, warm October day I decided, (against the better judgment of my dogs) to stop and take a closer look at them. Meanwhile my mom decided to make the pyramid out of them, but nobody seems to know what type of tree it comes from.
Thankfully do to the powers of the Internet and my persistent typing in of "green brain like tree seeds" into different search engines, I finally came across my answer.
This is fruit from the Osage-orange tree. This tree grows to be between 40-60 feet high and gives out this fruit which is about 4-5 inches in diameter, smells a bit like oranges, and has a sticky latex substance inside, but is for the most part inedible, but not poisonous. The strange part about this fruit is that it really isn't eaten by many current day animals, except some squirrels who eat the seeds inside, and an occasional horse. Some hypothesize that the now extinct mammoth, ground sloth or mastodon might have eaten it, thus helping with the seed dispersal. Some people call these pods "monkey brains" or "monkey balls." I'm just glad I'm not under any of these trees when one of these things falls to the ground!
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11 comments:
Interesting and educational!
Wow--I've never seen anything quite like it! Thank you for sharing the information about them too.
I grew up around Osage Orange trees. I love them. As kids, we collected these fruit because they smelled good.
That was totally new to me. Nice pyramid you made out of it, like stack of cannon balls in movies.
Interesting!I have never seen this kind of fruit, but I saw in Australia similar fruit that was called Jack Fruit and in Indonesia where I lived for 12 years I saw Durian, which has a very nasty smell, but looks like this. All of this fruit live in the tropical areas.
one more thing those pesky little squirrels will get their hands on.
I wonder why it's called Osage Orange...doesn't LOOK like an orange.
That is a bizarre looking fruit. I wouldn't want to be around one when it fell either. I know how much a little acorn hurts when it hits you the wrong way. Can you imagine that? Ouch!
Wow those are fascinating, interesting post
I read a book a while back (I think it was "The World Without Us") that talked about fruits that lost their distribution channel when most of the North American megafauna went extinct. It made me sad. I want to see the megafauna! (Although I don't want to be eaten by a saber-tooth tiger or trampled by a mammoth ...)
interesting information - looks like a pile of tennis balls to me!
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