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But she may not have known its incredible backstory.

Queen Victoria is said to have tasted one of the glowing green fruits. The Osage orange has been the subject of national manias, presidential discussions, and scientific controversy. The tree also forms nigh impenetrable hedges, which made it a primary tool for settling the Midwest and Great Plains. This rare combination makes it the world’s best wood for archery bows. Take its wood, for example: It burns hotter than any other in North America, resists decay better than any other in the world, and is both flexible and incredibly strong. More recently the Osage orange has managed to spread by appealing to humans. Some researchers think that the tree was once spread by extinct megafauna, perhaps giant ground sloths or mastodons, and that these fruits evolved to their ponderous size to appeal to these vanished giants. Though a couple animals, mainly squirrels, sometimes eat the seeds hidden inside the green flesh, they do not disperse them far. Not many animals or humans eat these neither-oranges-nor-apples. Even more confusingly, the most common name for their fruit is hedge apple (though they’re also called horse apples, Irish snowballs, or monkey brains). Osage orange trees are not related to oranges they’re more closely related to mulberries. On top of that they have a strange story that few people know. For one thing, they’re the size of softballs-the largest fruit of any tree native to North America.

When the fruits of the Osage orange tree fall to the ground in autumn, they demand notice.