Fruit in Osage Orange Botanical Illustrations and Elementary Series

Summary: Sherlock Holmes eats a fruit that epitomizes osage orange botanical illustrations and entraps a criminal in Elementary's Internal Audit Dec. 12, 2013.

osage orange (Maclura pomifera), under synonym Maclura aurantiaca; A-branches; B-portion of branch with female catkin; C-male flowers; D-male flowers, separate; E-young fruit; F-section of young fruit, showing seed disposition; G-full grown fruit; print by botanical engraving firm of Henry Hopkins Weddell (1794-1838) and Edward Weddell Smith (1796-1858) in A.B. Lambert's Description of the Genus Pinus (1828), vol. II: Public Domain, via Biodiversity Heritage Library

Osage orange botanical illustrations address the shrub-tree's fruit and approach the sap in accompanying analyses, just as they appear in the Columbia Broadcasting System series elementary episode Internal Audit Dec. 12, 2013.

The kicked-in door of dead independent journalist Rosalie Núñez (Kristine Johnson) bears osage orange sap from a nearby public park under a 24-7 crime-busting surveillance system. Sherlock Holmes (Jonny Lee Miller) consumes the fall-yellowing, latex-secreting, 3- to 6-inch (7.62- to 15.24-centimeter), woody-pulped single mass that comes from fruiting-bodied infructescences from fruiting-flowered inflorescences. He designates it monkey brains, one of its common names with bodark, bois d'arc ("wood of bow"), bow-wood, hedge apple, horse apple, mock orange and yellow-wood.

Sherlock explains the cucumber-tasting fruit as citrus-like to eat but elucidates nothing about the bitter, sticky, thick, white sap that, like leaves and thorns, it exudes.

Groppendorf-born German botanist Camillo Karl Schneider (April 7, 1876-Jan. 5, 1951) furnished one of the most accurate osage orange botanical illustrations with scientific annotations in 1906.

Osage orange gets the scientific citation (Raf.) Schneid. and the scientific name Maclura pomifera (Maclure's fruit-bearer) Nuttall by taxonomists who give credit for multiple same-plant discoverers. The citation has Rafinesque for Constantine Samuel Rafinesque-Schmaltz (Oct. 22, 1783-Sep. 18, 1840), French-German-Italian Americanized polymath who had osage orange described and named in December 1817. Maclura and Nuttall respectively identify geologist William Maclure (Oct. 27, 1763-March 23, 1840) and his friend Thomas Nuttall (Jan. 5, 1786-Sep. 10, 1859), taxonomist in 1818.

Meriwether Lewis (Aug. 18, 1774-Oct. 11, 1809) judged Pierre Chouteau's (Oct. 10, 1758-July 10, 1849) specimens worthy of Thomas Jefferson's (April 13, 1743-July 4, 1813) attention.

Clayey-, sandy, silty-loamy, moist, nutrient-rich, permeable, sunlit, well-drained bottomland soils above pH 4.5 kick-start fall-germinating cream-brown, oval, untreated, 0.32- to 0.47-inch- (8- to 12-millimeter-) long seeds.

Hardiness lets 30- to 60-foot (9.14- to 18.29-meter) by 30- to 35-foot (9.14- to 10.67-meter) shrub-trees survive at minus 30 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 34.44 degrees Celsius). Mature shrub-trees manage deep-furrowed, orange-brown-barked trunks 2 feet (0.61 meter) around, orange-barked, 27-foot- (8.23-meter-) deep taproots and sharp, 0.5- to 1-inch- (1.27- to 2.54-centimeter-) long thorns. Alternate-arranged, end-pointed, simple, smooth-margined, 1.58- to 4.73-inch- (4- to 12-centimeter-) long, 0.79- to 2.36-inch- (2- to 6-centimeter-) wide leaves net darker green upper-sides, hairy, lighter undersides.

Osage orange botanical illustrations observe April- through June-blooming, cylinder-clustered or globular, green, hairy, short staminate flowers with four stamens and large yellow anthers on male-blossoming shrub-trees.

April- to June-blooming, dense, globular-clustered pistillate flowers present circular, flat, green, small ovaries with thread-like yellow stigmas and 0.59- to 0.98-inch (1.5- to 2.5-centimeter) basal diameters.

Shrub-trees queue up in black walnut, cedar-elm, red-cedar and white ash, mulberry and oak woodlands and boxelder-elm-locust, hackberry-oak, hickory-oak, hickory-oak-pine and northern and southern floodplain forests. Osage orange resists environmental pathogens, pests and pressures other than chainsaw girdling, picloram and triclopyr treatments, compacted soils, cotton root rot, eastern mistletoe parasitism and winter-kill. The relative of breadfruit, fig, mulberry and pineapple, serves as antioxidant, cockroach repellent, dye, fence, hedge, pesticide, post, railroad tie, shelterbelt and wagon hubs and rims.

The brown, green, orange, yellow shrub-tree turns up in osage orange botanical illustrations, bows for archers, fences, hedges and Internal Audit's homicide scene and public park.

Sherlock Holmes (Jonny Lee Miller) surveys crime scene of murdered private hedge fund manager Donald Hauser (Thomas Ryan), whose killing is finally solved by way of a slick of osage orange sap on similarly-murdered journalist Rosalie Nuñez's apartment door in Elementary tv series' Internal Audit (season 2 episode 11): Elementary @ElementaryCBS, via Facebook Dec. 11, 2013

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

osage orange (Maclura pomifera), under synonym Maclura aurantiaca; A-branches; B-portion of branch with female catkin; C-male flowers; D-male flowers, separate; E-young fruit; F-section of young fruit, showing seed disposition; G-full grown fruit; print by botanical engraving firm of Henry Hopkins Weddell (1794-1838) and Edward Weddell Smith (1796-1858) in A.B. Lambert's Description of the Genus Pinus (1828), vol. II: Public Domain, via Biodiversity Heritage Library @ https://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/30944690

Sherlock Holmes (Jonny Lee Miller) surveys crime scene of murdered private hedge fund manager Donald Hauser (Thomas Ryan), whose killing is finally solved by way of a slick of osage orange sap on similarly-murdered journalist Rosalie Nuñez's apartment door in Elementary tv series' Internal Audit (season 2 episode 11): Elementary @ElementaryCBS, via Facebook Dec. 11, 2013, @ https://www.facebook.com/ElementaryCBS/photos/a.151627898295663.14686.151013691690417/293094214149030/

For further information:

Elementary Writers ‏@ELEMENTARYStaff. 12 December 2013. "All the Osage Orange stuff, including the park in Brooklyn where they're found, is true. #monkeyballs #ELEMENTARY." Twitter.
Available @ https://twitter.com/ELEMENTARYStaff/status/411335995271815168

"Internal Audit." Elementary: The Second Season. Los Angeles CA: Paramount Pictures Corporation, Dec. 12, 2013.

Lambert, Aylmer Bourke. 1828. "Maclura aurantiaca. Osage Orange or Bow-Wood." Description of the Genus Pinus, Illustrated With Figures; Directions Relative to the Cultivation, and Remarks on the Uses of the Several Species: Also Descriptions of Many Other Trees of the Family of Coniferae. Second edition. Vol. II: 32. London, England: Messrs. Weddell, MDCCCXXVIII.
Available via Biodiversity Heritage Library @ https://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/30944690

"Maclura aurantiaca Nutt." Tropicos® > Name Search.
Available @ http://www.tropicos.org/Name/21301576

"Maclura pomifera (Raf.) C.K. Schneid." Tropicos® > Name Search.
Available @ http://www.tropicos.org/Name/21300468

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Park Slope Parents @ParkSlopeParents. 26 October 2014. "If you've see these in Prospect Park they are fruit from the Osage Orange Tree." Facebook.
Available @ https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=751575554889877

Schneider, Camillo Karl. 1906. "Fig. 153 a-g Ioxylon pomiferum (Maclura aurantiaca)." Illustriertes Handbuch der Laubholzkunde: 239. Jena, Germany: Gustav Fischer.
Available via Biodiversity Library @ https://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/448423