In my Texas childhood we called Osage oranges "horseapples" and fed them to horses. I'm not sure how effective this was at dispersing their seeds.
I suppose that would depend on if the horses were free range or confined to a fenced field.
The trees that miss the mammoths (2011)
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Re: The trees that miss the mammoths (2011)
#12I have a huge Osage orange tree. Generally nothing eats them, but when the snow stays on the ground for weeks, and forms a crust of ice… eventually the squirrels will tear apart the fruit and eat a few of the hundreds of oranges. It might be that the squirrels using it as a famine food in anomalous weather years is enough to spread it. In my neighborhood the big Osage oranges were planted in the late 1800s along the…
> A once in a hundred year weather event would be enough to keep a population going. The concept of a tree that propagates by tornado is hilarious, but somehow not unbelievable.
Houses get dispersed by tornadoes, why not fruit?
Re: The trees that miss the mammoths (2011)
#13Earlier quoted context omitted.
> A once in a hundred year weather event would be enough to keep a population going. The concept of a tree that propagates by tornado is hilarious, but somehow not unbelievable.
Houses get dispersed by tornadoes, why not fruit?
That gives me a funny science fiction idea. Once we have self-building, self-repairing devices and infrastructure. Nanobots? Whatever. A tornado goes through destroying houses and in the aftermath cornfields are littered with little growing houses seeded from the debris.
Re: The trees that miss the mammoths (2011)
#14Osage orange produces wood that is the 2nd hardest in America, behind the live oak. It's exceptionally resistant to decay and insect attack. I've seen osage fence posts that are at least 70 years old and are none the worse for wear. If we could breed a variety that grew straight, it'd be a great source of dense decay resistant timber. Interestingly, the common mulberry is one of its closest relatives, and its wood has similar properties (but usually smaller and not quite as hard / dense). It's too bad there isn't more research being done around osage orange and its potential commercial value. Perhaps genetic modification will help.
Re: The trees that miss the mammoths (2011)
#15I have a huge Osage orange tree. Generally nothing eats them, but when the snow stays on the ground for weeks, and forms a crust of ice… eventually the squirrels will tear apart the fruit and eat a few of the hundreds of oranges. It might be that the squirrels using it as a famine food in anomalous weather years is enough to spread it. In my neighborhood the big Osage oranges were planted in the late 1800s along the…
On the hillside behind my parent's house are a few varieties of ivy and some St. John's wort. Based on what is getting eaten we can estimate the local deer population's hunger level - they have a distinct preference order.
Re: The trees that miss the mammoths (2011)
#16Avocados are another seedpod (technically a berry, believe it or not) evolved to be eaten by mammoths and giant sloths. Unlike the osage orange, however, it didn't adapt to their extinction and would likely have gone extinct itself afterward, except for one saving grace: Mesoamerican humans thought they were delicious and started cultivating them.
Re: The trees that miss the mammoths (2011)
#17I have a huge Osage orange tree. Generally nothing eats them, but when the snow stays on the ground for weeks, and forms a crust of ice… eventually the squirrels will tear apart the fruit and eat a few of the hundreds of oranges. It might be that the squirrels using it as a famine food in anomalous weather years is enough to spread it. In my neighborhood the big Osage oranges were planted in the late 1800s along the…
I see it more as a shrub than a tree. How high are they?
(Everybody underestimates the ant power)
Re: The trees that miss the mammoths (2011)
#18Good, except it propagates the notion that the marginal human presence at the time wiped out continent-spanning species. The best evidence now is that a meteor strike on the Canadian ice shield wiped out most of the megafauna, and the Clovis culture, at one stroke, initiating the 1200-year Younger Dryas cold spell. The damage reached as far as Syria and southern Africa, leaving a layer of platinum-enriched dust.
I would be every interested in reading this evidence :) The "Black Hole" hypothesis certainly explains close overlaps between "humans arrive and increase on population" and "megafauna go extinct".
But then I'm not claiming that it was all Homo sapiens - rather, climatic change had already placed species under stress, then man was the final stressor that pushed them over the brink.
Re: The trees that miss the mammoths (2011)
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
Houses get dispersed by tornadoes, why not fruit?
That gives me a funny science fiction idea. Once we have self-building, self-repairing devices and infrastructure. Nanobots? Whatever. A tornado goes through destroying houses and in the aftermath cornfields are littered with little growing houses seeded from the debris.
Lovely idea for a Pixar short movie :)
Re: The trees that miss the mammoths (2011)
#20Avocados are another seedpod (technically a berry, believe it or not) evolved to be eaten by mammoths and giant sloths. Unlike the osage orange, however, it didn't adapt to their extinction and would likely have gone extinct itself afterward, except for one saving grace: Mesoamerican humans thought they were delicious and started cultivating them.
This was sort of alluded to in the article, they mention both avocado and papaya.