Trees Trivia

Starlight: Boink!

Very rot resistant wood that Osage Orange. Great for fences. Somebody posted a link once where you can find local lumberyards that carry weird woods. Does anybody remember that link?

Willis

giggles and more giggles!

Willis mentioning rot resistant wood reminded me of the Devilwood Osmanthus. There two things about it. Think I remember one of them has to do with the way the leaves cast the shadows. Then when I asked about where the name came from, nobody knew, so I googled it one night and found that the wood it self is a "devil" to work with.

Woodworking potential of osage orange. The wood is 35% more dense than oak. (I have dislocated both shoulders trying to bush axe suckers off the t rees.) It is used for fence posts, but a more sensible way is probably to string wire directly onto the trees. This is how it was done throughout the Blackbelt in Alabama. There was a Tuscaloosa woodworker who used a lot of Osage Orange inlays in his furniture constructions. The wood is henna red (Lucille Ball color). His inlays were compositions of ebony, walnut (deep brown), magnolia (white), and the osage orange. Also, the wood is used for carving. The sherrif of Franklin Co. Alabama (in the 80s when I worked there as an archeologist) was quite prolific in the manufacture of dough bowls. He said the Osage Orange would often split, but he just filled the cracks with a glue and sawdust concoction. If any one would like Osage Orange wood, I have two 150 year-old trees down. You have to take the whole tree though. D Mail if interested.

could a birch bark - no, but a dogwood.

'Cannonball's' aren't good enough for y'all. I'm throwing Castanea husks.

HEEHEEHEHEHEHHEHE. Oh my sides. Them are cute. Hope I can remember them. : )

I got into a discussion with someone today and we got to talking about plants and their history and I was reminde d of this thread and was sharing some of your stories and was aske d if Iknew the story about the tre e that owned itself.

Hope I get this right, seems that in mayeb it was Athens Ga. This older man was ill and would look out evryday of his bedroom window at this tre e in his yard. This tre e would brign him joy. Before he died he had a will drawn up. he willed all the land around that tree to the tree.

When he died, some developer wanted to put a road where the tree was. The developer was unable to. Seems the man was a lawyer in his day and drew up an ironclad will that in no way this tree could be removed or anybody take the land it was on.

Was told that the developer had to go around the tree and a wall was built and a plague put on the wall about this tree that owned itself.

Wondering if this story was true, I googled and here it is.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_That_Owns_Itself

Seems now that there is a " Son of a Tree That Owns Itself"

Malus "Apples, like women and snakes, have a nasty reputation dating back to the book of Genesis. Unlike women and snakes however....whose past activities have been largely forgiven and forgotten (?).......Malus, from the Latin for bad, as in malicious, malevolent, and malcontent. It seems unfair that the apple should have been saddled with this moral stigma, since biblical scholars now agree that the fatal fruit probalby was not an apple all." Adam should never have biten that apple.

and.... Eve should not have given it to him to bite! :>}

It was because she was malicious, malevolent and malcontent.

Starlight1153: there is a fig tree near me on HWY 14 who presides over an empty lot of several acres. Years ago, there was a gas station and convenient old time grocery. Now the property has been bull dozed, but the owner specified that the fig was not to be harmed. So there she stands on an empty lot --like your tree that owned itself. She still provides figs in summer to meandering boys--and cuttings for people like me who would like another one of that tree.

I guess all the tree people are aware of this but I just learned that the "nuts" in a Christmas mixed-nut bowl are not really nuts at all....but the equivalent of a stone of drupe fruits such as plums and peaches. Acorns...beechnuts, hazelnuts and sweet chestnuts are true nuts. So almonds, walnuts. hickory nuts are not nuts. Some acorns act like true nuts when provoked but are other wise unedible to anyone except squirrels.

Huh??? I don't get it. Why are almonds, walnuts, hickory NUTs not nuts? What does an acorn do when provoked that would make it more of a nut than a normal acorn. Technically, I am not a tree person, so I didn't get this lesson in graduate school.

It's a good thing that I approach the holiday nut bowl with a cracker and pick. Imagine confronting a filbert, when provoked, with my bare hands. ;>}

I lost too. I also thought if it had a soft outside then it was a drupe, hard outside a nut. Didn't get this info in either of my tree classes either.

Somebody confuse me more than I already confused. : ) ) Actually I thought I was the only true nut around. LOL

Almonds walnuts and pecans and hickories (Botanically speaking) are not considered true nuts.. they are all surrounded by a fleshy layer while on the tree and as such are the equivalents of the stones or drupe fruits such as plums and peaches.. Brazil nuts are officially seeds. Cashews are actually the seeds of drupe fruits (poisonous.. the shell) that's why you never see them for sale in the grocery store in their shell. They are related to poison ivy...and are non nuts. Peanuts are another non nut (the blossoms after fertilization bend down and actually drill themselves into the soil.(protecting the developing seeds). Actually the acorn was a staple diet of the Indians....the part about it being "provoked" was a joke. (to some)

By that definition a chestnut--is not a nut, since it is encased in a spiney bur, and in reality is no better at approaching nut-hood than the seed of liquidamber styraciflua--

"known to induce nightmares and other mental dysfunctions in veterinarians inhabiting western portions of the 15th state"

even if such sweet gum tree grew at Graceland.

My! The tree forum is so educational!

Cool.!!!!!! Thanks for explaining. : ) Dahhhhhhhh !!!!! I just now got the provoked joke. Somedays it hard being a blonde. Why you think I keep my jokes simple. I can never remember the punch lines. : )

When my hickories start producing again, will have to go out and take a closer look at them. Never paid to much attention to them while they was green.

Recipies from Tree Forum, kmanblue, Oct, 21, 2006

Acorn Mush recipe: [HYPERLINK@www.nativetech.org]

Acorn Pancakes rcipe: [HYPERLINK@www.nativetech.org]

Apache Acorn Stew w/ Dumplings recipe: [HYPERLINK@www.nativetech.org]

Acorn Breakfast recipe: [HYPERLINK@www.nativetech.org]

Nupa (Acorn) Soup recipe: [HYPERLINK@www.nativetech.org]

I think the last one is the one White_Hydrangea was trying to post, but maybe someone is interested in the others also.

Yeah most people don't know almonds come from the Prunus genus like cherries and plums.

I just got a whole bunch of really good ideas for new on-line names from this thread...

starlight:

So are gum balls a nut or not?

Yikes!
I still prefer "ol' pecan-head" or 'Dr. Nutman' over "Luckyidambar", but I'm well aware of the pitfalls of being a regular visitor here. LOL

The "true" nuts (like sweet chestnuts) do not have a fleshy layer (while on the tree). I was referring to the non-nuts (like SP) that have a fleshy layer and are therefore considered drupes. So have a Merry Christmas and have a drupe or two. You could also have some acorn coffee...I have the recipe. Can't make coffee out of crabapples.

Actually, Castanea husts are fairly fleshy when they are immature, and so are the husks of Turkish Hazel (a 'true nut' producer) very fleshy when immature. Conversely, hickory and walnut husks can be quite thin and dry at maturity. I've never been able to understand exactly what is supposed to make a 'botanical' nut. Seems to me, hickories and walnuts should be 'in'.

Resin

Who decides these things?

you tree people are hysterical! just get a laugh every time I stop by here

thank you all and Merry Christmas!!!!

I do miss the tall Oak though and hope his Christmas is filled with.... well hmmm Nuts? and happines and joy and peace and good health

same to all here be well!!!
Anne

"a woman, a dog, and a walnut tree, the more you beat 'em the better they be." "According to the medieval doctrine of Signatures, which ascribed therapeutic properties to plants based on their resemblance to specific parts of the human body, the walnut with its skull-like shell and brain like kernel was a likely treatment for ailments of the head. Ground walnut shell was thus prescribed for head wounds, and walnut meats for headaces and mental illness. Somewhat less logically, walnuts were said to ward off lightning, witchcraft, and epileptic fits. The head-like aspect of the walnut led to the nineteenth-century use of the word "nut" to mean head and the accompanying "off one's nut", to mean crazy; and to the twentieth-century phrase "to use one's nut", which meant to think "nuts" which meant cuckoo, and the associated "nut case" who more often than not ended up in the "nut house". Wondering if juglans is toxic to oak trees?

Michigan State says that Oaks(Quercus sps.) are susceptible to Juglone toxicity, but Cornell University says they aren't susceptible to it and are able to grow very close to Walnuts(Juglans sps.) without problem. I'd lean more towards the Cornell claims, based on what I see in the wild and plus they seem to have more evidence/studies to back up their conclusion.

There are reports that the juice from a white ash leaf rubbed immediately on a mosquito bite will afford some measure of relief from the usual swelling and itching.

----------------------Native Trees of Canada R.C. Hosie