I have an Osage Orange tree that has stopped producing fruit. Any ideas why?

[NNN0LHI]

It has been producing hedge apples by the thousands for the past twenty years I have lived here. I think its about a 100 years old. Few years ago it began producing fewer and fewer apples and this year only a couple. Is it reaching its life span and dying? Has it changed sexes? Can they do that? The male trees never have produced any fruit. Does it have something to do with climate change?

Anyone familiar with these trees?

Don

[mn9driver]

1. Osage Orange trees can live a very long time.

There are several specimens on the east coast documented to be around 300 years old. Big fruits like horse apples take a lot of resources. The tree is probably stressed in some way: Drought, root damage, etc.

[NNN0LHI]

2. Thank you for the info

She looks very healthy accept for the lack of fruit. Hope I don't lose her. I like these trees. Got ten of them bordering my property with a farm field. A couple of the males are about 60 feet tall.

Thanks again.

Don

[pscot]

3. I understand the wood

makes a great longbow.

[Grinchie]

4. I have only seen one in my lifetime, on an old depression era farm.

The farm is not isolated in the median of Interstate 99 in California, South of Bakersfield, and was struggling to survive for decades without any care wahtsoever.

I have heard that they are fairly easy to root from cuttings, so you may want to try that and get a dew more clones going if you want to keep them around. From what I've heard, the wood was in high demand for tool handles, wagons, yokes and other application that required a hard, enduring piece of wood. They were also used as living fences and for timber.

I haven't seen one for at least 20 years, but the fruit that I picked years ago, after making a special stop to see this unusual tree in the median of the freeway, caused me to look it up and do a bit of research.

Perhaps the water table dropped... Do you or can you irrigate it? Are you overwatering it? Hard to tell, since it grows just about anywhere.

[NNN0LHI]

5. I called the Morton Arboretum about this question. Local call

http://www.mortonarb.org/

They answer these kinds of questions about anything you have growing between 11:00 AM - 3:00 PM Central every Mon-Fri. if anyone ever needs a question answered like this. Phone number there is 630-719-2424.

They diagnosed this problem as weather related. We had a strange summer here weather wise this year and they said that this tree has a very short period to flower and become pollinated and without the right winds or if we get a lot of rain during this short period they won't do good at producing fruit. It was raining a lot in June around the time this tree flowers so that makes sense. All the flowers were likely knocked off before they had time to pollinate.

Don