Hi, my name is Luke Lawson. I’m a Senior at UAF in the Wildlife Biology major and I hope to go on to study and specialize in entomology, more specifically beetle taxonomy. My favorite plant is Maclura pomifera, commonly known as the osage orange. It’s my favorite because it reminds me of my hometown in Northern Virginia, where they can be found all over the sidewalks every fall.
Welcome Luke,
these are some cool fruits! They are from the Moraceae (mulberry family), so related to figs. But really they remind me most of jack fruits, Artocarpus heterophyllus. A tree from India and Maylasia with oval leaves up to 8 inches long and warty fruit up to 2 feet long (weighing up to 40 pounds) borne along the main trunk. But also similar to breadfruit, Artocarpus altilis. Another tree with large, incised leaves, native to Malaysia, common in Hawaii. Brought to Hawaii by migrating Polynesians. In Hawaii it had several uses: 1) wood was sometimes made into surfboards, 2) bark was used to produce an inferior grade of tapa, and 3) the softball sized fruit was baked and made into pudding similar to Kulolo. Anybody interested in ethnobotany of osage orange, check this paper https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02859211.