Of all our presidents, Thomas Jefferson clearly had the greenest thumb. The great statesman was a gardener extraordinaire. Monticello, Jefferson’s beautiful Virginia estate, was a horticultural ...

If you take a walk in the forest around Halloween, you might just come across a bunch of what appears to be softball-sized green brains laying all over the ground. If you look up, you may still see ...

Osage oranges look like a cross between a neon green brain and a baseball. The fruit is hardy enough to survive fall frosts when they’re grown in container gardens and used in floral arrangements.

While traveling through the Midwest on leaf peeping adventures, modern day explorers may find a rather nondescript tree with unique, distinct fruit. A medium-sized tree adorned with large, round, ...

Each year in mid- to late October, the OSU Extension office fields questions about hedge apples, an oddity of nature which seem to fall from the sky in autumn. These large and heavy fruits with an odd ...

Few Missouri trees have histories that are more interesting than the Osage orange. These trees are probably most noticeable at this time of year due to the large bright green fruit — called “hedge ...

“Monkey brains!” the kids exclaimed as we reached the old dirt road. I was leading an outdoor school program, and it took me a moment to realize the students were referring to the big, lumpy fruit ...

The hedge apple, also known as Osage orange or mock orange, is the distinctive fruit of the Osage orange tree (Maclura pomifera). These large, green, wrinkled spheres have long been a source of ...

Over the years I’ve heard many gardeners, local farmers and landscapers say that the Osage orange (Maclura pomifera) is a useless, thorny, gangly tree. I agree that the tree is thorny, somewhat gangly ...

Out on a Sunday stroll, Becky and I came upon a smattering of softball-sized, citrus green balls lying on a carpet of fallen foliage. They looked like something you could buy at Five Below. We were on ...