It has also been used to treat some forms of leukemia and. When I stopped to photograph some in Osage County, Kansas, the trees were so large that it was easy to photograph the fruit against a blue sky. Hedgeapple has been used to treat a variety of cancers, including breast, prostate, and lung cancer. Human consumption is not recommended and the contact with skin could bring various issues from itching, etc. I do not know of any cancer use and in doing research did not come across any reference to that use. Each Hedge apple lasts about 2-3 months for this. You were lucky to find such a nice color match between the fruit and the leaves, and to find the unblemished fruit still on the trees. They are used in households to repel spiders. Your photo does show their visual appeal. Personally, I’d tuck them into the category called “neither poisonous nor palatable.” From what I’ve heard, no one’s going to eat enough hedge apple to be poisoned because no one could stand to eat enough of the fruit to be poisoned. Whether the Osage orange did the trick, I can’t say, but I never heard any complaints about insects.Īs for the dangers of the fruit, cattle and horses do sometimes die from eating them: not because they’re poisonous, but because they get stuck in their esophagus and block the digestive tract. I do have a cousin who collected them and left them around the perimeter of her house to keep the insects at bay. It was even used in the Works Progress Administrations Great Plains Shelterbelt program. All of the fine qualities of the tree and its fruit have been covered in the above comments, so I don’t have much to add. They provide excellent soil erosion control and windbreak benefits.
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