The generic name is in compliment to William Maclure, distinguished geologist.
1. [Maclura pomifera] Schn. Osage Orange. Bow Wood.
Toxylon (Ioxylon) pomiferum Rafn.
Leaves 3′—5′ long, 2′—3′ wide; turning bright clear yellow before falling in the autumn; petioles 1½′—2′ in length. Flowers: racemes of the staminate flowers 1′—1½′ long; heads of the pistillate flowers, ¾′—1′ in diameter. Fruit 4′—5′ in diameter, ripening in the autumn, and soon falling to the ground.
A tree, sometimes 50°—60° high, with a short trunk 2°—3° in diameter, and stout erect ultimately spreading branches forming a handsome open irregular round-topped head, and branchlets light green often tinged with red and coated with soft pale pubescence when they first appear, soon becoming glabrous, light brown slightly tinged with orange color during their first winter, and ultimately paler. Winter-buds depressed-globose, partly immersed in the bark, covered by few closely imbricated ovate rounded light chestnut-brown ciliate conspicuous scales. Bark ⅔′—1′ thick, and deeply and irregularly divided into broad rounded ridges separating on the surface into thin appressed scales. Wood heavy, exceedingly hard, very strong, flexible, coarse-grained, very durable, bright orange color turning brown on exposure, with thin light yellow sapwood of 5—10 layers of annual growth; largely used for fence-posts, railway-ties, wheel-stock, and formerly by the Osage and other Indians west of the Mississippi River for bows and war-clubs. The bark of the roots contains moric and morintannic acid, and is used as a yellow dye. The bark of the trunk is sometimes used in tanning leather.
Distribution. Rich bottom-lands; southern Arkansas to southern Oklahoma and southward in Texas to about latitude 35° 36′; most abundant and of its largest size in the valley of the Red River in Oklahoma.
Largely planted in the prairie regions of the Mississippi basin as a hedge plant, and occasionally in the eastern states; hardy in New England; occasionally naturalized beyond the limits of its natural range.
3. FICUS L. Fig.
Trees, with milky juice, naked buds, stout branchlets, thick fleshy roots frequently produced from the branches and developing into supplementary stems. Leaves involute, entire and persistent in American species; stipules inclosing the leaf in a slender sharp-pointed bud-like cover, interpetiolar, embracing the leaf-bearing axis and inclosing the young leaves, deciduous. Flower-bearing receptacle subglobose to ovoid, sessile or stalked, solitary by abortion or in pairs in the axils of existing or fallen leaves, surrounded at base by 3 anterior bracts distinct or united into an involucral cup bearing on the interior at the apex numerous rows of minute triangular viscid bracts closing the orifice, those of the lower rows turned downward and infolding the upper flowers, those immediately above these horizontal and forming a more or less prominent umbilicus. Flowers sessile or pedicellate, the pedicels thickening and becoming succulent with the ripening of the fruit, unisexual, often separated by chaffy scales or hairs; calyx of the staminate flower usually divided into 2—6 sepals; stamen 1; filament short, erect; anther innate, ovoid, broad and subrotund, 2-celled, the cells opening longitudinally, 0 in the pistillate flower; sepals or lobes of the calyx of the pistillate flower usually narrower than those of the staminate flower; ovary sessile, erect or oblique, surmounted by the lateral elongated style crowned by a 2-lobed stigma; ovule suspended from the apex or lateral below the apex of the cell, anatropous. Fruit mostly immersed in the thickened succulent receptacle, obovoid or reniform; flesh thin, mucilaginous; nutlet with a flat crustaceous minutely tuberculate shell. Seed suspended; testa membranaceous; embryo incurved, in thin fleshy albumen, cotyledons equal or unequal, longer than the incumbent radicle.