Osage Orange - Red Oak ISD Middle School

My good friend Bill has helped me find, cut, and load more trees than I can remember.

In February 2022, he spotted several huge piles of tree trunks stacked on the empty field at the Red Oak Stadium/Middle School property off of Bells Chapel Rd. After working through the channels at the school district, he was assured we wouldn’t be arrested for theft of government property, so we brought our gear and cut enough off of the trunks for 3-4 trailer loads. Of course, we had but one trailer.

It looked as if the school district had cleared out some of the trees along the back fence line. The fence line was shared with the backyard of residents, and while there were still plenty of trees there, this was our best guess. Some of the species we saw in the piles were growing along that fence line. However, due to the volume of trees in the piles, plenty probably came from other land they had as well.

There was plenty of Oak that he is using for his projects, but I got enough Osage Orange and Cedar to last for many projects.

Osage Orange is the tree that drops the big orange ‘horse apples’ that have dimples all over them. The tree has been in the area for many years, but I’ve never seen a downed Osage Orange before. The wood is extremely hard, yet flexible, and was used by Native Americans to craft bows.