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Question: I live in Central Arkansas, Conway (30 miles north of Little Rock) specifically, and I remember a strange bumpy green …
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Question
I live in Central Arkansas, Conway (30 miles north of Little Rock) specifically, and I remember a strange bumpy green fruit a little bigger than a softball on the side of the road as a child. I smashed it to find sort of silky pulp and several large seeds. My mother said it was an Osage orange & the seeds were buckeyes. I searched online & see the fruit looked identical to the Osage orange pics but the inside was different & the fruit containing buckeye looked nothing like my childhood find. ??
Answer
Dear smevil13, good morning. Regions of the United States have all sorts of local names for various plants. I don't know if the osage-orange that you knew as a child was at a different stage of maturation than the ones you have more recently seen or if something else is occurring. Yes, the buckeye (genus Aesculus) is a member of the soapberry family and has a very different fruit than osage-orange (a member of the mulberry family). Best wishes.