Osage orange

I've posted this one before, but it was looking pretty awful (style-wise) last year after a repot  and is doing better this summer.  I did a bit of pruning and wiring (Ouch! The thorns, the thorns!) this afternoon

If growing from a root sprout counts as growing from seed, Russell, this one qualifies.  It was a sprout from one of the large Osage oranges we planted along our drive in Tallahassee in 1979.  I separated it in 1995, and put it into a bonsai pot in 1999 or 2000.  

The second picture was take a few years ago when I had it in a smaller pot.  It shows the tree after a repot and all the root that came out of that little pot.  I'll probably be repotting this again in the coming spring.  We'll see how much root I harvest then.

Maclura pomifera, Osage orange -- and NO RELATION to the citrus!

love it!
i'll wait for next progress..

Vry nice, it's rather unusual as a bonsai but yours shows it should be used more often.

Looking good Jim!

Those things grew all over the place on the chalky hills around Starkville, MS.  I never really gave them much thought as a bonsai subject, kinda wish I'd paid more attention to them when I was at MSU.

R

I have several small ex-seedlings, if you want to come up and visit some time.  I'm pretty much through adding trees to my collection of bonsai so they gotta go somewhere. <g>

Thanks Jim!

Correct me if I'm wrong...

Seems like I remember these things sprouting everywhere from the roots of older trees, especially if the roots had been damaged somehow. I wonder if you could make some interesting little trees from pruned roots, or by collecting old gnarled roots from the ground?

Just a thought...

wow, this is a great bonsai, my compliments.


Regards , Daniel

Jim,

That tree is looking just wonderful!!!!  If I lived closer I'd come up to see  you and get one of those seedlings but I'm just too far away.  By the way, the care sheet that we did on Osage Orange with the picture of your tree should appear in the next issue of the ABS Bonsai Journal.

Seems like I remember these things sprouting everywhere from the roots of older trees, especially if the roots had been damaged somehow. I wonder if you could make some interesting little trees from pruned roots, or by collecting old gnarled roots from the ground?

Just a thought...

I don't know about "everywhere," but that is what this tree was.  It was perhaps pencil thickness, when I separated it from Momma.

We have a houseful of bodies this weekend.  There's me, Jackie, son Kent, his sister Lisa, two of her children, 11-year-old granddaughter Jacqui (off to summer camp today), and 19-year-old grandson Henri, three small dogs and two BIG dogs (and two very overwhelmed cats outside the house, not to mention the 4 horses in the pasture or barn).

In honor of this very rare and quite noisy occasion, I brought the Osage orange inside to be a small island of peace and quiet.

very nice. I like this tree

Jim,, that is a very nice tree !! pot and tree go togather well.. they had some here at a food fair one year,,wish i had picked one up !! good job once again..take care  john

Is there an app like when you scratch the screen you smell the scent?

It probably stinks, Alain. It isn't even closely related to the citrus. The "orange" in its common name refers to the color of the bark, the hard very orange wood, and to the rather ugly, citrus-like fruit.



Anyway, this tree starts into fall earlier than anything else I have. It's leaves already have lost more than half their chlorophyll. The fall "color" is Yurt Yellow, followed immediately by black. Compare the color of this tree with the photo earlier this summer.

I took the tree up to Asheville to a club meeting last month where Arthur Joura suggested I'd better take some off the top, which was getting a bit thickly branched and heavy. I took a bit off today, just to give it a better shape, but I suspect major surgery will be called for during the winter and the tree will have to be hidden over the next growing season.

I brought this to the top in case anyone wanted to see an osage orange

badger5149 wrote:   I brought this to the top in case anyone wanted to see an osage orange

Thanks, I saw an Osage orange bonsaï, and it's nice.

In the horticulture school my younger son went to, it was its favourite tree