Osage Orange Stock Photo

A windfall of osage orange fruits, Maclura pomifera, also called hedge apples and brain fruit under a prolific tree with a rustic split rail fence beside and white pickets behind. Native Americans used the wood of this tree to make bows and clubs. The fruit is not generally eaten by humans or animals. It is sometimes called a ghost of evolution because the animals that once ate it, mammoths mastodons giant sloths gomphotheres and others are now extinct.