Osage orange question...

[nsherve]

Has anyone noticed any differences between the male and female osage trees? Is one of them better for bows? I cleaned one up that had fallen on a church's grave site. It didn't have any fruit. There's a few on that church yard, none of them have fruit, but some right around the corner were loaded down.
There's actually three more trunks on that tree, and they're pretty good size. I got 14 logs (trunk and branches) from the one that fell down.

[osage outlaw]

I've cut a lot of osage trees and never paid any attention to them being male or female.  I don't think it makes any difference.

[Eric Krewson]

Sometimes female trees don't have fruit. For me osage is osage, the location it grows is what determines differences between trees.

Some osage doesn't have thorns, in all my cutting I have run across two that didn't have any thorns. I thought the first one was mulberry because of the lack of thorns and gave most of the wood away. I went back to the stump the next year and found all the sprouts from the stump had thorns.

[Aaron H]

Honestly I don't know how to distinguish the two apart, also I think it takes osage like 20+ years to begin developing fruit.

[nsherve]

Yea, it's just an assumption that it's a male tree because there's a female tree maybe 50/60 yards away. The tree is a good bit over 20 years. I haven't counted the rings, but the tree is about a foot+ wide.
There's some twist in parts of it, but doesn't seems too bad. I've only partially split one of the logs so far, so I'll see how the rest of it is when I get a roundtoit.
Mostly, I was just wondering how the performance differed between the two "sexes(?)" Not much, if any then..?
 Thanks

[Pat B]

I've made lots of osage bows and never considered whether it was male or female.

[bradsmith2010]

me too, I have never heard of it making a difference,,