Monkey Brains

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Monkey Brains

Image by elycefeliz
Osage Orange (Maclura pomifera)
Another very interesting member of the mulberry family is the osage orange (Maclura pomifera). Native to the midwestern and southeastern United States, this species is also known as the hedge apple because it was planted in thicket-like hedge rows before the advent of barbed wire fences.

The fruit is neither an orange nor an apple, although it approaches the size of those fruits. Like the breadfruit and jackfruit, it is a true multiple fruit composed of numerous separate ovaries, each arising from a separate female flower. In fact, the bumpy surface of the fruit is due to the numerous, tightly-packed ovaries of the female flowers. The black hairs on the surface of the fruit are styles, each arising from a separate ovary.

The wood of osage orange was highly prized by the Osage Indians of Arkansas and Missouri for bows. In fact, osage orange is stronger than oak (Quercus) and as tough as hickory (Carya), and is considered by archers to be one of the finest native North American woods for bows. In Arkansas, in the early 19th century, a good osage bow was worth a horse and a blanket.

A yellow-orange dye is also extracted from the wood and is used as a substitute for fustic and aniline dyes in arts and industry.

Osage-orange or Horse-apple en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osage-orange
Maclura pomifera, known as Osage-orange or Horse-apple, is dioeceous plant species, with male and female flowers on different plants. It is a small deciduous tree or large shrub, typically growing to 8-15 m tall. The fruit, a multiple fruit, is roughly spherical, but bumpy, and 7-15 cm in diameter, and it is filled with a sticky white latex sap. In fall, its color turns a bright yellow-green and it has a faint odor similar to that of oranges

Recent research suggests that elemol, one of the major components of oil extracted from fruit of Osage orange, shows promise as a mosquito repellent with similar activity to DEET in contact and residual repellency.

The fruits are sometimes torn apart by squirrels to get at the seeds, but few other native animals make use of it as a food source. This is unusual, as most large fleshy fruits serve the function of seed dispersal, accomplished by their consumption by large animals. One recent hypothesis is that the Osage-orange fruit was eaten by a giant ground sloth that became extinct shortly after the first human settlement of North America.

The Osage-orange is commonly used as a tree row windbreak in prairie states, which gives it one of its colloquial names, "hedge apple". It was one of the primary trees used in President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's "Great Plains Shelterbelt" WPA project, which was launched in 1934 as an ambitious plan to modify weather and prevent soil erosion in the Great Plains states, and by 1942 resulted in the planting of 30,233 shelterbelts containing 220 million trees that stretched for 18,600 miles.

The fruit from this tree is sometimes called "Monkey Brains" due to its resemblance to a small brain.

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Image by Arno Meintjes Wildlife
10 Facts about White Lions

1.White Lions are not albinos, but a genetic rarity unique to one endemic region on the globe: the Timbavati region.
2.The Genetic Marker that makes White Lions unique has not yet been identified by science.
3.The White Lions are currently classified under the general species classification Panthera leo, although this is likely to change after the genetic research undertaken by the Global White Lion Protection Trust reveals important reasons for sub-speciation of this rare phenotype.
4.The earliest recorded sighting of white lions in the Timbavati region was in 1938. However, the oral records of African elders indicate that these unique animals survived in this region for many centuries.
5.The unique white lion gene is carried by certain of the tawny coloured lions in the region, and white cubs occurred in numerous prides in the region.
6.Since their discovery by the West, white lions and those lions carrying the unique gene have been hunted, and forcibly removed from their natural endemic habitat.
7.The last white lion was seen in the wild in 1994, after which time they were technically extinct in the wild.
8.The idea that white lions are genetically inferior to ordinary tawny lions has not been scientifically tested.
9.The idea that White Lions cannot survive in the wild due to perceived lack of camouflage has not been scientifically tested.
10.Currently, there is no law nationally or internationally that protects the White Lions from being wiped off the face of the earth.