Leehongyi, I'm sorry for going slightly off topic. I find this debate about wood species much more interesting than a vague picture that shows what appears to be a simple, straight, wooden longbow.
The tree seems to represent a species bridge between the Mulberry and Osage.
Could you elaborate on that, please? What do you mean with "seems to"? Do you have anything to back this up, or do you just compare two pictures?
Darksoul, they have actually crossed it with osage. I wonder how much of it is growing wild, The berry looks awful familiar. Probably not very popular because of the long thorns.
I've finished a university degree in plant biotechnology and I actually know a lot about this subject. That's why I like this topic
I've been doing some research about the species
Cudrania tricuspidata, and here's what I've come up with.
Osage orange (
Maclura pomifera) and this
Cudrania tricuspidata are both in the mulberry family Moraceae, but in two different genera. I used the website
The Plant List to find out more about the use of these genera. The Plant List is a reliable website that deals with all known names for plant species and lists synonyms and updated names for species. Remarkably, the genus
Cudrania is completely unresolved! That means that none of the species are reliable, or at least no proper research has been performed on these species in an attempt to find out about their genetic relationships. In contract, the genus
Maclura is pretty much fully resolved (
source). We can even see the species
Maclura tricuspidata Carrière as an accepted name! That species lists four synonyms:
Cudranus triloba Hance,
Morus integrifolia H. Lév. & Vaniot,
Vanieria tricuspidata (Carrière) Hu and
Vanieria triloba (Hance) Satake. The website Tropicos (another well accepted and trusted site) lists
Cudrania tricuspidata (Carrière) Bureau ex Lavalle even as a synonym for
Maclura tricuspidata Carrière (
source).
The existence of an intergeneric cross
Cudrania tricuspidata (Carr.)) x
Maclura pomifera var. 'inermis' and even then back-crossed with
Maclura pomifera var. 'inermis'
(
source), fortifies the suspicion that
Maclura tricuspidata Carrière is in fact the correct name for
Cudrania tricuspidata. Intergeneric crosses in plants are rare, so it is likely that the genus
Cudrania is part of the
Maclura genus. It could even be a subgenus in the genus
Maclura. If they are not in the same genus, the two genera must be really closely related. Since I cannot find any taxonomic literature about the relationship between the two genera, I cannot inconclusively say whether
Cudrania tricuspidata is really
Maclura tricuspidata. But for me, there are clear indications that
Cudrania tricuspidata is extremely closely related to our famous Osage orange, and as such, it should be wonderful bow wood!