Osage Orange
A Folk Legend Outside the Books
There’s a scruffy tree in flyover country that lives life on the outer edges. People used to plant it as a hedge tree, and it either formed natural barriers and windbreaks in the flat lands, or the termite and bug resistant wood was used for fenceposts. Our woody weed of the week also lives on the fringes of herbalism too. Though it’s packed with potent molecules, this gnarly neighbor of ours is not recently found “in the books” of Western herbalism as any more than a source of yellow dye. So it was surprising to pick up on the local stories of the fruit of this tree being successfully used as a folk remedy for cancer. People use the Osage orange from the Maclura pomifera tree as a tea or or eaten raw or frozen to treat tumors. Some use it adjuctively with other chemotherapy, and some have even refused chemo, and relied only on the Osage orange.
What has kept this tree out of the herbals? Perhaps fear of toxicity, since anything with cytotoxic properties surely has dosing liabilities. Rumors abounded that the fruit was poisonous to livestock and humans but none of this has been established to be true. The seeds are a food for small mammals and birds, though most don’t seem to prefer the taste of the whole fruit. But this doesn’t fully explain the reticence, as there are numerous other plants with cytotoxic potential which are well published and used by herbalists for various reasons. Still, there are the few, the proud, and the independent who boldly proclaim their use of the Osage orange, and we’re going to give a bit of botany, and biochemistry to back them up.
The Osage Orange fruit has numerous nicknames, mock orange, horse apple, hedge apple, hedge balls and a crass name too: monkey balls. If you see the immature fruit with the sparse hairs still sticking out of it… maybe that’s what kept it out of the books. Those hairs are the remnants of the 200 or so flowers found in the spheroidal, female flowering head. The male flowers of this dioecious species occur as 1-2 inch racemes of tiny flowers dangling from the leaf axils. Blooming occurs in Spring to early Summer, during which time the wind blows pollen from the male to the female trees. Fruits mature from September through October, reaching 4-6 inches (10-15 cm) in diameter. The bumpy green orbs are called a ‘syncarp of drupes’ with seeds buried deep within, surrounded by a bright green covered rind that oozes a latex sap when cut. This latex causes skin sensitivity in some people, though it’s not reliably linked to latex sensitivities to other species. It’s been shown to contain enzymes that can break down proteins, fats and carbohydrates, inspiring its comparison to pancreatic enzymes. Heat, as expected, inactivates the ability of the sap to digest these substances.
In the early 1900s, the oil from the seeds was deemed a light, penetrating oil similar to linseed oil and of potential use to industry. Though it’s taken a century, Todd Johnson of Bloomfield in southern Iowa has parlayed the bumpy mock-orange into a skin and hair care industry. He’s been extracting the seeds, (which comprise about 11% of the fruit) to obtain a beneficial oil containing anti-inflammatory and antifungal substances which he adds to an ever expanding line of products, and has been selling online for years.
The tree itself, Maclura pomifera, of the mulberry family, Moraceae, is native to the south central U.S. and has been naturalized to much of the rest of the country and southern Canada. Its hardiness zone ranges from 4a to 9b. When conditions are ideal, it can reach heights of 70 feet, but in normal, native conditions of the plains, it’s bearing up in windy and dry conditions and will reach a scrubby 20 or 30 feet high, with a twisty, highly branched crown atop a short trunk. Normally the trees bear 1/4 to 1 inch thorns, making it a natural barrier tree, but there are some thornless male cultivars available.
The leaves of this deciduous tree are a glossy smooth green, and are arranged alternately on the branches. They’re oval in shape with smooth to slightly wavy margins, glossy above, sparse hairs below, and reach 3-5 inches (7-13 cm.) in length. They become a notably bright gold/yellow before they drop in the Fall. The leaf petioles are 1-2 inches (2.5-5cm) long and produce a milky fluid when broken.
The mature bark is orange brown with deep furrows with irregular ridges. The wood is dense, and characterized by strength and toughness of oak and hickory. The yellowish wood was valued for making bows, if a sufficiently straight and knot-less length could be found.
Fortunately, the Osage orange has found horticultural fans in Turkey and other countries, and therefore considerable research is being done on the constituents of this tree. (When hunting old and new literature, you can look for these alternative Linnean names of Maclura pomifera: Maclura aurantiaca Nutt. and the older Ioxylon pomiferum Raf. or Toxylon pomiferum Raf. ex Sarg..). Additionally, the folk usage of other Maclura species such as M. Tinctoria in South America for anything from rheumatic and gout pain, to syphilis. Anti-bacterial, anti-microbial, anti-viral, anti-malarial, cytotoxic anti-tumor, estrogenic, anti-inflammatory, anti-oxidant and antinociceptive activities are noted in literature. The plant has long been known to contain various xanthones, flavones, triterpenes and lectins, and much interest has been showered upon the prenylated isoflavones, osagin and pomiferin, which exhibit numerous activities. More recently, there is interest in elucidating the anti-nociceptive activity for which scandenone, is another of the prenylated isoflavone that has been credited. (That one is likely to be more efficiently extracted in a tincture rather than a tea.) Vast research exists on the properties and pharmacology of morin, a compound common to osage orange, mulberry, papaya, green tea and numerous other plants and likewise exhibits multiple salutary activities. Good oral bioavailability of numerous of these compounds explains why people are obtaining medicinal effects by either eating the osage fruit whole, or by drinking the tea.
Anti-nociceptives address pain by other than anti-inflammatory means. Think opiate and cannabinoid receptors, for examples. These drugs have the potential to put you in a happy space. So you can imagine why cancer patients are thinking of Osage oranges. The prenylated isoflavones and related compounds are addressing pain by multiple mechanisms, as well as inhibiting the runaway proliferation of tumor cells. Research shows activity of several compounds on cannabinoid receptors, possibly allosteric activity on delta, mu and kappa opioid receptors, and inhibitory activity on monoamine oxidases, more on MAO-B which metabolizes dopamine than on MAO-A, which is less specific and metabolizes serotonin, noradrenalin and dopamine, (and is more responsible for the famous hypertensive side effect that sometimes accompanies the use of monoamine oxidase inhibiting drugs).
There is a newer specialty which focuses on choosing which nutritional foods are suggested for particular types of cancers based upon genetic characteristics that determine the tumorogenic growth pathways. This field of nutritional genomics also is addressing other diseases for which the genetic propensities are known. It uses existing research based on where particular compounds are found to work on cell signalling pathways in vitro. The difficulty in this field is that it is based on what is known about the mechanisms of certain compounds in isolation. The recommendations from this nutritional genomic service regarding Osage orange and cancers seem to be based upon the single flavonoid compound, morin. However, osage orange, itself, is literally packed with compounds that impinge upon the biochemical pathways that regulate cellular growth and proliferation. Pomiferin shows a different set of activities, e.g. on mTOR and translation processes, and has demonstrated inhibitory activities on numerous tumor cell lines in vitro. So, theoretical assumptions about the interactions of a single compound can’t be said to govern the entire collection of activities possessed by the whole fruit. Probably the main consideration is whether the fruit physically or metabolically inhibits the activities of chemotherapy that has been chosen for a particular tumor, and that’s the kind of thing that people should be taking up with their oncology team.
At weedom, we tend to believe that many of the genetic propensities towards tumor production are likely being revealed, because people have less contact with the naturally occurring nutrients that would have helped their bodies to overcome these issues.
Meanwhile, those who use the Osage orange for tumor suppression have been freezing the fruits and consuming about a tablespoon or two of the grated fruit in solid form, or they’ve been making osage fruit tea. The popular home sized freeze dryers have been employed for preservation, making powders and encapsulated dose forms possible. When you avail yourself of the supplemental reading below, you might see the osage orange eaters as risk takers, but you’ll know that they’re not crazy. People who can’t eat bananas or dandelions, avocados, chicory, milkweed, etcetera because of latex should approach the Osage orange with caution. Consider applying some topically first before eating it. Remember the squirrels, birds and many humans have determined that the seeds taste OK, something like sunflower seeds, and after a lot of work, they can be eaten raw or roasted.
Keep in mind the various cancer miracle stories you have heard, about unexplained tumor regression or disappearance. Perhaps there was some kind of Divine intervention or inspiration to suddenly start obtaining the best nutritional support. Whole cancer clinics and institutes are popping up with that idea in mind.
For sure, no one at Weedom thinks that they’re God, but we do think that people should find some good weeds and eat them!!
If you have any Osage orange stories for us, be sure to comment or chat!
Where We Dig
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Another very inneresting and informative post. Thanks, shared to tumblr
In my tiny corner of SE Kansas, we had one ... we called it a hedge apple. It was not a favorite tree with it's spiny thorns. Now I wish I had gotten to know it better.