Osage Orange

The Osage Orange. Sometimes known as hedge apple because the trees were planted as a natural fence, or as my son likes to call them, Monkey Brains. It’s a mesmerizing fruit to me. They say the fruit repels spiders (spoiler alert- it doesn’t). I LOVE the way they smell. It reminds me of fresh laundry. I love to collect them in the fall once they’ve dropped and display them in a bowl on my entry table, dining table, or in a basket somewhere. I catch a whiff of their scent everytime I walk by. 

There isn’t much known about the osage orange. Some say the fruit helps with achieving goals, expressing your passions, and bringing your true passions to light.

This year, after keeping them on display for a few weeks they were starting to loose their ‘freshness’ which meant it was time for me to play with them.  First, I cut them up, boiled them down and made ink with them. I made two different shades of ink by adding baking soda to part of the liquid, which on the waterpaper I was using, made a beautiful avocado green. More 70’s vibe avocado green than the actual fruit. The other color was a lighter version that had more yellow.  My only set back was that I decided to experiment with this ink by adding arabic gum to the ink to make it thicker. Turns out, for the type of painting I do with them, a thicker ink isn’t the best. The thicker vials of ink didn’t even last a week of painting due to it’s thickness.  

I also want to experiment with the fruit in my Christmas decorations this year so I sliced the fruit into ¼” slices and dried them in my hanging herb rack.

My herb drying station

It didn’t take long to dry and the colors are incredible! I’m loving on that teal ring of color haaaaard. 

The garland made from dried Osage oranges.

A simple mantle using foraged finds.

After using all of my ink so quickly I decided to make the ink again with the dried slices. The results were the same! This is a game changer! I’m not sure where this process is taking me but to know I can use dried fruit if I wanted to use this color again when the fruit isn’t in season is amazing. 

Have you done anything with osage oranges before? Tell me so I can add it to my list for next year!

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