What the heck is this?

BurnedOutGeek;n29105 said:

I know it as citrus trifoliata, or trifoliate orange. The fruit is considered poisonous, or toxic. The fruit flesh is orange- like but not tasty. It's not native to the US, probably from Asia/China. A cultured plant that escaped cultivation and has adapted to our environment. I have seen a thicket of it, I would rather be dragged through the briar patch than across one of those orange plants.
 
groundsman;n49422 said:
I know it as citrus trifoliata, or trifoliate orange. The fruit is considered poisonous, or toxic. The fruit flesh is orange- like but not tasty. It's not native to the US, probably from Asia/China. A cultured plant that escaped cultivation and has adapted to our environment. I have seen a thicket of it, I would rather be dragged through the briar patch than across one of those orange plants.
What's the source for it to be "poisonous"?
 
majdurham said:
Looks like an Osage Orange. Some folks call it a Horseapple. They make outstanding wood for the making of longbows.
Folks used to plant them real close together around a fenceline. The old folks said that a "mad bull" couldn't get through it!

EDIT: read upthread and saw that you found it. As always...disregard my last.
Osage does make a good bow. Are you into traditional bows?
 
The pictures in question were taken here on my property, so to be fair I have had more access to it than a couple of pictures.

When you are standing in front of the tree it is little more obvious that it is the Flying Dragon cultivar.

The fruit is not toxic, we have been eating it for years, raw and cooked, same as the Germans for over 150 years and the Chinese for hundreds of years before that. There has been no skin irritation when handling the fruit, whether it was me, my wife, other forum members, or my two young daughters, who were 8 and 9 years old when we first started harvesting the fruit, and on whom skin irritation would have certainly manifest itself.
 
If you're in western NC, There's one one on the Blue Ridge Community College campus in Hendersonville. We have a geocache located at the base of it. You can find the exact GPS coordinates of its location here, if you want to visit the geocache listing page, or, if you just want the coordinates, N 35° 18.470 W 082° 25.236 will get you there. It's a sample in their "nature" area.
 
I've run into them while hiking before. They look like Jesus thorns, terrible things to be anywhere you wouldn't have a barbed wire fence.



When we were kids awalking around in the woods hunting we called that the Jesus bush. Specifically because of that. Very rarely see one though. Very unique plant.
 
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