The monkey ball for the compost or not?

[Bobberman]

Each year I have access to a 100 or more monkey balls. I was wondering if anyone has used them for the compost?
I had this jaggy tree groing all around my moms home all my life. I actually climbe many of them The Rolling Rock beer brewery is built around my moms home and these trees were all along the divider of our yard and the brewery . I would say 15 trees! My girlfriends house has 10 trees along the road! For those of you who never knew what a monkey ball was here is a link. Even Martha Steward had a show with them used for decoration!
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https://hedgeapple.com/

[applestar]

That was an interesting link.
There used to be a really big tree by a route I took to go to work, and it dropped these orange-like fruits on the road. it was a narrow country road-turned-throughway and very busy with a blind hill so I never considered stopping to pick them up.

The property it was on had a large bug sculpture on the mailbox and I always assumed (or there was a sign) that it was an exterminator business. maybe the first paragraph of the linked article explains why this tree was there.

Folklore provides numerous claims that hedgeapples are repellent to insects and spiders. The fruit of the osage orange has been placed in households for ages.

Then one day, the tree was cut down, and the house had been demolished. It had been an architecturally very interesting looking house too....

[rainbowgardener]

AKA osage oranges. Where I used to live and garden we had an O.o. tree that dropped the balls/ oranges all over the place. I did put them in the compost pile. My observation was that the ones that dropped in the driveway and got run over by the cars composted very easily. If I put them in the pile whole/intact they stayed that way for a long time. Eventually they do compost, but it takes patience that way. If you have some way to split/ smash them, it will work better.

[Dixana]

I'm just curious here....but I thought they were poisonous? Does that matter once they're composted or is it just a myth?

[toxcrusadr]

They are called hedge or osage orange around MO - BTW the Osage Indians lived here. Slightly OT but I can't help talking about the wood - an amazing shade of fluorescent yellow-green, extremely dense, burns very hot in the wood stove, and is extremely weather resistant. Farmers used it for fence posts and some of them are standing decades later. It's hard to find a tree big enough to make into lumber though.

[Bobberman]

I bet they would make great tomato post!

[!potatoes!]

adding to toxcru's post, fresh-cut osage orange also roots readily - many of the places they've been used for fenceposts, they've rooted and made new trees (only this time, in a line, connected with wire)...so I'd say let them dry a bit if you want to use them for tomato stakes.

they're related (by a bit) to mulberries, figs, and the asian fruit che (all, similarly, have compound fruits)...trying to grow out some osage orange from seed this year to use as a rootstock for che, which suckers a little too profusely for comfort...

none of this relates directly to the OP, but, you know how it is...

[toxcrusadr]

I did not know they would root themselves! No wonder they call them hedge trees - put em in a line and they make their own hedge.

[rainbowgardener]

I'm just curious here....but I thought they were poisonous? Does that matter once they're composted or is it just a myth?

Mg is right again! They are not toxic. You can however put them in your kitchen cupboards to repel bugs or in your pet's bed to repel fleas.

But if they were toxic, it still wouldn't matter. There are plenty of toxic plants we throw into the compost pile. By the time the plant is broken down, the toxins are broken down too and there's no problem.

There are a few exceptions to that, like poison ivy. The urushiol is a oil/resin that can get spread all through the pile. I don't know if it would eventually break down, but in the meantime if you touched your compost you would be in trouble. Poison hemlock is not recommended for compost piles, because it is toxic in such small amounts, the toxins don't break down well, and it is toxic on contact (wear gloves if you have to touch it) not just by ingestion.

[tomc]

Now none a this is likely to be science. Osage Orange is one of the trees I've tried with limited success as bonsai. And collected gossip about.

FWIW one writer speculated that OO outlived one or more of the ice-age super-fauna (ground sloth?) that used to eat leaves and fruit. The lack of that herbivor being the distributor of seeds is why the home range of this tree has been on decline.

Another claimed that it was planted as living hedge, pre-barbed wire. Though poles rooting could be at least as tidy a reason why it grows in-at-near fence rows as what I was told.

Osage Orange fruit is resinous and like anything fatty/oily will take its own sweet time composting. So if speed is your absolute need, when composting yard waste, break them open or pass on them in the compost bin.