This site is a treat. My Uncle Tobe who was from Kansas and quite the tease, called these LEAVERITE APPLES. . . "leave 'er right there, it's no darned good." Looks like he was wrong, but it was good fun. I'm eager to check out their less frivilous properties.

- Pat Holcomb

     Maclura pomifera struggles here in coastal Maine (zone 5, but with a long winter and long stretches of deep below zero cold that hurts plants which can take typical zone five minimums for a night or two a winter, but not two weeks at a stretch). My best tree is about twelve feet tall, maybe an inch and a half caliper, and has required probably ten years from an eighteen inch seedling to get there. There is always some tip dieback each winter, typically about a third of the previous season's growth. I would be pleased to receive seedlings or whips dug in the spring from the colder, higher elevation, or more northerly parts of its range, and will construct such cash deals or plant exchanges as anyone wishes to propose. I drove to the Arnold Arboretum yesterday (zone 6) for my annual collection of fruits. I have no idea if my tree is M or F, so wish to promote several healthy trees to guarantee fruit. This is a well done website. Most sites are shallow or stupid or poorly organized. May I also suggest readers visit nyow.com for a nicely laid out site by enthusiasts of the New York Ontario and Western railroad, which has nothing to do with osage orange but is the now defunct railroad which ran past my boyhood home in Guilford, NY (sugar maple country).

- Chris