This is a tree with various names.  Some refer to it as the bois d’arc (pronounced “bodark”), which is french for “bow wood.”  It is also referred to as an Osage orange tree, hedge apple tree, and horse apple tree.  All of these monikers have a basis in the properties of the tree, as we shall see in the following paragraphs.  Some people dislike these trees, while others adore them, depending upon their perspectives.

The picture above is a trunk of a bois d’arc tree.  The wood of this tree is extremely hard and tough, which makes it a sought after tree for cutting into fence posts.  But if you intend to cut one of these trees, you had better arm yourself with plenty of sharp chains on your chainsaw, as the tough, yellowish wood of the bois d’arc will dull the chain rapidly.  It is also advisable to wear long sleeves made of thick fabric, as the spines on the branches can cause painful lacerations if you are not careful.

The canopy of the bois d’arc forms a tangled mass of branches, which are armed with stout, flesh-piercing barbs.  Because of the dense mass of resilient, barbed and tough wood that the tree produces, it was planted with tight spacing as a hedge row in times prior to the invention of barbed wire.  It is referred to as being “horse high, bull strong, and hog tight,” an ideal specification for a farmstead hedge row.  Because of the toughness and decay resistance of the wood, combined with the long, straight, resilient branches that this tree produces, it was prized as a source of wood in which to construct bows in the past, hence it’s name bois d’arc tree, or bow wood tree.

This is the fruit produced by the bois d’arc.  Some call this the Osage orange, possibly because the skin emits a citrus-like scent when it begins to rot.  Because the trees were often grown as a hedge, the fruit has been called a “hedge apple” by some.  Because the fruit is consumed by horses, it is termed a “horse apple” by others.  Osage orange, hedge apple, or horse apple, it remains that humans do not consume this fruit.  But, as just mentioned, horses eat the fruit of the bois d’arc tree, as well as squirrels and cattle.

If you slice the fruit in half, which requires a stout knife, as the fruit is quit hard until it begins to rot, you will find that after a minute or two the fruit begins to “weep”, as you can see in the photograph above.  Only the female tree produces the fruit, which propagates the tree through the germination of the approximately 200 seeds contained within the fruit.  In the fall, the fruit begins to drop from the limbs of the tree, and when they do, watch out, as it hurts to be struck by the falling, heavy, hard fruit of the Osage orange, or bois d’arc tree.

In my post of a couple of days ago entitled It’s Fall And They’re Fallin’, I showed how an amateur (myself) goes about collecting fallen black walnuts from his lawn.  Today I will introduce you to a friend of ours, Jasper, whom you may recall from a previous post entitled Bee Hunting In The Ozarks, is an experienced bee keeper, as well as the regions most skilled practitioner of the vanishing art of “coursing” bees.

 

  I would say without hesitation that Jasper (Jay) is an old pro at gathering black walnuts.  He is consistently this area’s top seller to Hammons Nut Products, who purchase black walnuts from local gatherers in 12-16 states each fall.  Jasper begins his nut gathering each year just prior to the opening of the Hammons collection stations, which, this year, will occur tomorrow.

 

The first step in the gathering process for this seasoned harvester is to shake the lower limbs of the trees, so that the loose nuts that remain attached to these limbs will fall to the ground.  The pole that Jay is using has a hook at the end, which Jay drapes over a limb and then tugs a few times.  As you can see from the photograph above, Jay wears a hard-hat while performing this task.  If you have even been hit in the head by a large, unhulled walnut that has fallen from the top of the tree, you will immediately understand the precaution that Jasper takes – it hurts!

 

The photograph above shows the effectiveness of shaking the limbs.  Now, one only has to pick up the nuts and load them into the truck.  On Jay’s next visit to pick up nuts, he will bring an extension for his pole, which will allow it to reach limbs 20 feet higher than the lower limbs of today’s harvest. 

In last Friday’s post, you may remember this photograph, which shows me using an interesting tool designed to make the nut gathering process easier to accomplish.  I love this tool.  Two years ago, I showed it to Jasper and asked if he would like to try it out.  “Sure would,” he replied.  About an hour later, when I looked across a pasture to see how Jay was coming along, I noticed that he wasn’t using the tool I had lent him.  When I inquired later as to why he had abandoned the tool, looked at me and replied “It just slows me down.”

And this is how Jasper prefers to gather the fallen walnuts – by hand, the old-fashioned way.  But that is how the pros do it.  Keep this photograph in mind as I take this opportunity to become a little bit analytical.

The record that the title of this post refers to is the personal annual total amount of nuts gathered by Jasper, which stands at over 17,000 pounds of hulled black walnuts, a record he achieved 2 years ago.  Jasper thinks he may top that amount this year, based upon the trees he has examined to date.  Now for some simple math.  Recall from It’s Fall And They’re Fallin’, that we derived the average weight of a small sample of black walnuts that I gathered the other day:  .0712 pounds/nut, or about 14 nuts per pound.

Jasper tells me, based upon his experiments, that a hulled walnut weighs about 60% less than it’s unhulled weight.  I have not confirmed this, but taking him at his word, we can derive the following.  To end up with 17,000 pounds of hulled walnuts, one has to start with 28,333 pounds of unhulled nuts (17,000#/.60).  If we take my calculation of 14 unhulled nuts per pound as accurate, then Jasper would have had to pick up a total of 396,666 nuts to arrive at 17,000 pounds of hulled walnuts.

When Jasper achieved this personal record two years ago, Hammons was paying $10.00/cwt for hulled walnuts.  So Jasper’s gross revenue from his efforts was $1700.  Considering the fuel expense involved in multiple trips to the collection station (about 25 miles distant), as well as multiple trips to many area farms, the net revenue does not amount to all that much income – especially when one imagines the amount of labor involved in hand gathering nearly 400,000 nuts!

By the way, Jasper will celebrate his 83rd birthday in two weeks.  Happy birthday, Jay, and we wish you many more to come!