Make no mistake about it — News Leader readers always come up with some thought-provoking questions, including this inquiry from Nick M. of Staunton: "This is a crazy question, but how do you plant an ...

The fruit of the Osage orange tree. (Clay Wollney) Indeed they do, but you won't see them growing on hedges any more. Better known as the Osage orange, the gnarly green fruit that smells like the skin ...

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 ...

You see them on the ground every fall, those grapefruit-sized green balls lying at the bottom of trees around Topeka or in the nearby countryside. It is doubtful you ever picked one up and ate it — a ...

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 ...

Today we are going to have fun with the Osage orange, “maclura pomifera” — also known as brain fruit, monkey brains, Irish snowballs, postwood, bow wood, yellow wood, hedge oranges, hedge apples and ...

The heyday of living fences on farms lasted less than 30 years. But Osage orange trees, descendants of fence rows planted as early as the 1840s, still line country roads and fill hedge lines ...