7/29/2023 0 Comments Hedge applesPrepared and managed in this way, all our farmers may easily procure hedges that will, in many cases, double the value of the lands they surround. Those who have seed to sell should either sell it to nursery men, or sow it themselves and not induce the farmers to scatter it about their fields until they have more knowledge on the subject than they now possess. The proper approach, he wrote, was to plant the seeds in a nursery and later transplant the seedlings where fences were needed. Turner himself wrote the Journal the next month to tell farmers not to try planting an Osage orange hedgerow by seed. Mather’s bush of the Osage Orange, of the last year’s growth, six feet in length. I have within a few days cut a shoot from Col. Mather, in Springfield, which any person can examine by going to his garden. There is one bush of the Bois d‘Arc growing in the grounds of Col. There is a hedge some fifty miles above Beardstown, three years old, now sufficient to turn any kind of stock. It is one of the greatest things that has ever been tried. I am surprised to see that the Illinois farmers are paying so little attention to the cultivation of the Osage Orange or Bois d’Arc hedge. Part of the ad (which was headlined “Hedge fence”) read: Whittenberg was offering Osage orange seed for sale at the S.M. Whittenberg referred to it in an advertisement published in the March 10, 1848, Illinois State Journal. The first Osage orange tree in Springfield apparently grew what was known as the Mather property (the site of today’s Statehouse). Osage orange trees grown closely together and pruned were considered “bull strong, hog tight, and horse high”. This meant a bull couldn’t push through the thorns, a hog could not get through the tight growth, and a horse could not jump over it. Settlers needed to keep their livestock away from their crops and the railroad tracks. On the prairie, trees were scarce and wood was a precious commodity. Building fencing to contain cattle was an expensive proposition. Split rail fences were expensive, $500 per mile. A prairie fire would easily destroy the costly fencing, sending all a farmer’s hard work and money up in smoke. Wire fencing at the time was brittle, not galvanized, causing the wire to rust and easily break. … Young trees and new growth on trees have sharp one-half-to-1-inch thorns. Thorns, its dense growth when pruned, and its ability to survive extreme conditions are the reasons this tree came to the prairie. Osage orange tolerates poor soil, extreme heat, strong winds, is easily transplanted, and has relatively few insect or disease problems. Prior to barbed wire, Osage orange hedges were the best fences available to Midwestern farmers, according to the National Forest Service at Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie, Turner regularly counseled Sangamon County farmers by letter on how to plant, grow and maintain their living fences. Turner, a professor at Illinois College, an abolitionist and an agricultural innovator, was the Osage orange’s most prominent researcher and advocate. Illinois’ leadership was largely due to Jonathan Baldwin Turner of Jacksonville. But farmers in Illinois were among the first to use thickly planted Osage orange barriers to keep their animals out of their crops, and hedge fences quickly spread throughout the other prairie states. But Osage orange trees, descendants of fencerows planted as early as the 1840s, still line country roads and fill hedge lines throughout central Illinois.Īs the name suggests, the Osage orange (also known as the hedge apple, Osage apple, horse apple and Bois d’Arc) originated farther west in Oklahoma, Arkansas and Texas. The heyday of living fences on farms lasted less than 30 years. Osage orange trees with fallen fruit ‘hedge apples’, along country road near Athens, 2019 (SCHS)
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