Hedge Apples for Insect and Spider Control
Filed Under: Do It Yourself, Susatainable Living on August 16, 2009
For a long time, traditional American remedies for insect and spider control in the fall months has included the use of hedge apples. These are the fruit of the Osage-orange tree, commonly used in large hedge grows as a wind break.
Common in the central U.S., these wide trees surround golf courses, edge large estates, make wind breaks for ranch houses, and more.
Most of the time, the grapefruit-sized “apples” are considered a nuisance by caretakers and are routinely gathered and thrown away before they can begin to rot on the ground.
Folk medicine and remedy believers, however, have held that these hedge apples are excellent spider and insect repellers. In the early fall, when these fruits ripen, they are often seen for sale in grocery stores and farmer’s markets.
Learning About Hedge Apples
I had seen these before, but didn’t know much about them. This year, I found them for sale in our local co-op grocery and bought a couple of them. The picture at the top of this article is from the University of Nebraska Lincoln and came from an article written by Dr. Barbara Ogg about the trees and their fruits.
That article says that there is no scientific evidence that the fruit of the Osage-Orange tree has any insect or arachnid repellent properties. She does talk about a study done by Iowa State University in which the fruit’s juices were found to be insect repellents when in high concentrations, but that the concentration in natural hedge apples are not high enough.
My problem with that study is that it focused on ripe fruits and the compounds in them. What about slowly-rotting fruit? While information online is scarce, the proponents of the hedge apple as a spider and insect repellent are divided as to how to use it to do so. Some say to place the whole fruit into key locations and another says to cut the fruit up and place pieces in key locations. All of them say that they take “time” to work–telling me that as the fruits begin to “go bad,” they might be emitting more of whatever it is that repels insects.
The problem is that information is limited to hearsay from Web forums since the professional sites that talk about this sort of thing have had the FDA come down on them to have the information removed. Since it’s “not scientifically proven” and supposedly insect repellents fall under the purview of the FDA, the mention of them as insect repellers is banned. Except, of course, to mention the “folklore” around them.
People are free to talk, however, so there are some Web forums and discussion groups that share information despite the FDA. The problem is that they are written by amateurs and are usually written as questions-and-answers rather than straight forward articles. This makes the information harder to compile.
What I have learned is extremely interesting, though. One site which sells these is Hedgeapple.com. They’ve gotten around the FDA problem by just creating a user “survey” area where people can log in and put in their experiences with the use of hedge apples for whatever use they’ve tried.
Facts About the Hedge Apple
Here you can see one of the hedge apples I purchased at the grocery. That should tell it all as far as how they look.
They’re about the size of a grapefruit, have a really interesting texture with tiny little black hairs in the crevices. They’re granny smith apple green (hence their common name) and fairly dense and heavy.
They are not edible! They won’t hurt you if you are insane enough to try to eat one, but they are nasty-tasting.
They don’t have an odor, really–at least not a very pungent one. They smell like very muted orange peels. When you cut one open, though, you can get a better whiff. It’s still not a bad smell, but if you put your nose close, you’ll know that they don’t taste good.
Being the intrepid type that I am, I tried it anyway. I cut a sliver and put it in my mouth. I held it in there for about two seconds. UGH!
Anyway, they won’t hurt your pets (who won’t be interested in eating them either–I checked) and are basically odor-free and safe. The only known animals to die from them are large livestock (horses, cows) who’ve tried to eat them and swallowed them whole, choking themselves. Not exactly common.
Just by looking at this, you can judge what my wife’s reaction to it was right off. Yep, it’s “decorative” too. They’re popular decorations, being arranged in bowls and other folksy displays.
Using the Hedge Balls (Apples)
As I said earlier, the uses for these as insect and spider repellent are conflicted as to the exact “how.” So I’m going with one of each. I cut one open (into quarters) and placed it into dishes on one end of the basement. I took the other and put it in our bedroom as a “decoration” near the window.
The idea is to see which way seems to work best. Most of the spiders we see are in the basement, so this isn’t exactly a scientific test. My hope is that not cutting them will be the trick, as they’ll last much longer that way. At seventy-five cents each, I can’t exactly complain if they don’t work.
The last picture here is to give you some perspective on the size of these hedge apples. I’ll keep you updated as to how they’re working out.
To find out how this worked out, read the update at this link.
