Мақлұра померифера: Сипаттамасы мен қасиеттері

Species of plant

Maclura pomifera, commonly known as the Osage orange ('/oʊ//s//eɪ//dʒ/ OHsayj), is a small deciduous tree or large shrub, native to the south central United States. It typically grows about tall. The distinctive fruit, a multiple fruit, is roughly spherical, bumpy, in diameter, and turns bright yellow green in the fall. The fruits secrete a sticky white latex when cut or damaged. Despite the name "Osage orange", it is not related to the orange. It is a member of the mulberry family, Moraceae. Due to its latex secretions and woody pulp, the fruit is typically not eaten by humans and rarely by foraging animals. Ecologists Daniel H. Janzen and Paul S. Martin proposed in 1982 that the fruit of this species might be an example of what has come to be called an evolutionary anachronism—that is, a fruit coevolved with a large animal seed dispersal partner that is now extinct. This hypothesis is controversial. Maclura pomifera has many names, including mock orange, hedge apple, hedge, horse apple, pap, monkey ball, monkey brains and yellow wood. The name bois d'arc (from French meaning "bow wood") has also been corrupted into bodark and bodock.

The earliest account of the tree in the English language was given by William Dunbar, a Scottish explorer, in his narrative of a journey made in 1804 from St. Catherine's Landing on the Mississippi River to the Ouachita River. By providing a barrier that was "horse high, bull strong, and pig tight", Osage orange hedges provided the "crucial stop gap measure for westward expansion until the introduction of barbed wire a few decades later". The trees were named bois d'arc ("bow wood") The trees are also known as "bodark", "bodarc", or "bodock" trees, most likely originating as a corruption of bois d'arc. They liked the wood because it was strong, flexible and durable, The wood is heavy, hard, strong, and flexible, capable of receiving a fine polish and very durable in contact with the ground. It has a specific gravity of 0.7736 or .

Leaves are arranged alternately in a slender growing shoot long. In form they are simple, a long oval terminating in a slender point. The leaves are long and wide, and are thick, firm, dark green, shining above, and paler green below when full grown. In autumn they turn bright yellow. The leaf axils contain formidable spines which when mature are about long. Branchlets are at first bright green and pubescent; during their first winter they become light brown tinged with orange, and later they become a paler orange brown. Branches contain a yellow pith, and are armed with stout, straight, axillary spines. During the winter, the branches bear lateral buds that are depressed globular, partly immersed in the bark, and pale chestnut brown in color.

As a dioecious plant, the inconspicuous pistillate (female) and staminate (male) flowers are found on different trees. Staminate flowers are pale green, small, and arranged in racemes borne on long, slender, drooping peduncles developed from the axils of crowded leaves on the spur like branchlets of the previous year. They feature a hairy, four lobed calyx; the four stamens are inserted opposite the lobes of calyx, on the margin of a thin disk. Pistillate flowers are borne in a dense spherical many flowered head which appears on a short stout peduncle from the axils of the current year's growth. Each flower has a hairy four lobed calyx with thick, concave lobes that invest the ovary and enclose the fruit. Ovaries are superior, ovate, compressed, green, and crowned by a long slender style covered with white stigmatic hairs. The ovule is solitary. The mature multiple fruit's size and general appearance resembles a large, yellow green orange (the fruit), about in diameter, with a roughened and tuberculated surface. The compound (or multiple) fruit is a syncarp of numerous small drupes, in which the carpels (ovaries) have grown together; thus, it is classified a multiple accessory fruit. Each small drupe is oblong, compressed and rounded; they contain a milky latex which oozes when the fruit is damaged or cut. The seeds are oblong. Although the flowering is dioecious, the pistillate tree when isolated will still bear large oranges, perfect to the sight but lacking the seeds. The fruit has a cucumber like flavor. It has since become widely naturalized in the United States and Ontario, Canada. Another historic tree is located on the grounds of Fort Harrod, a Kentucky pioneer settlement in Harrodsburg, Kentucky.

Because of the limited original range and lack of obvious effective means of propagation, the Osage orange has been the subject of controversial claims by some authors to be an evolutionary anachronism, whereby one or more now extinct Pleistocene megafauna, such ground sloths, mammoths, mastodons or gomphotheres, fed on the fruit and aided in seed dispersal. An equine species that became extinct at the same time also has been suggested as the plant's original dispersal agent because modern horses and other livestock will sometimes eat the fruit. while a 2018 study concludes that squirrels are ineffective, short distance seed dispersers. because it is mostly inedible due to a large size (about the diameter of a softball) and hard, dry texture. Large animals such as livestock, which typically would consume fruits and disperse seeds, mainly ignore the fruit. Loggerhead shrikes, a declining species in much of North America, use the tree for nesting and cache prey items upon its thorns.

Maclura pomifera prefers a deep and fertile soil, but is hardy over most of the contiguous United States, where it is used as a hedge. It must be regularly pruned to keep it in bounds, and the shoots of a single year will grow long, making it suitable for coppicing. A neglected hedge will become fruit bearing. It is remarkably free from insect predators and fungal diseases.

Osajin and pomiferin are isoflavones present in the wood and fruit in an approximately 1:2 ratio by weight, and in turn comprise 4–6% of the weight of dry fruit and wood samples. Primary components of fresh fruit include pectin (46%), resin (17%), fat (5%), and sugar (before hydrolysis, 5%). The moisture content of fresh fruits is about 80%. The sharp thorned trees were also planted as cattle deterring hedges before the introduction of barbed wire and afterward became an important source of fence posts. In 2001, its wood was used in the construction in Chestertown, Maryland of the schooner Sultana, a replica of
The heavy, close grained yellow orange wood is dense and prized for tool handles, treenails, fence posts, and other applications requiring a strong, dimensionally stable wood that withstands rot. Although its wood is commonly knotty and twisted, straight grained Osage orange timber makes good bows, as used by Native Americans. Osage orange wood is more rot resistant than most, making good fence posts. Compounds extracted from the fruit, when concentrated, may repel insects. However, the naturally occurring concentrations of these compounds in the fruit are too low to make the fruit an effective insect repellent. In 2004, the EPA insisted that a website selling M. pomifera fruits online remove any mention of their supposed repellent properties as false advertising.

The Comanche formerly used a decoction of the roots topically as a wash to treat sore eyes.