TREE HUCKLEBERRY (_Vaccinium arboreum_) is the only tree form of twenty-five or thirty species of huckleberry in this country. The cranberry is one of the best known species. The range of tree huckleberry extends from North Carolina to Texas, and it reaches its largest size in the latter state where trunks thirty feet high and ten inches in diameter occur, but not in great abundance. The fruit which this tree bears has some resemblance to the common huckleberry, but is inferior in flavor, besides being dry and granular. It ripens in October and remains on the branches most of the winter. The fruit is about a quarter of an inch in diameter, dark and lustrous, and is a conspicuous and tempting bait for feathered inhabitants of swamp and forest. The bark of the roots is sometimes used for medicine, and that from the trunk for tanning, but it is too scarce to become important in the leather industry. The tree is known in different parts of its range as farkleberry, sparkleberry, myrtle berry, bluet, and in North Carolina it is known as gooseberry. The wood is hard, heavy, and very compact; is liable to warp, twist, and check in drying; polishes with a fine, satiny finish. Medullary rays are numerous, broad, and conspicuous; wood light brown, tinged with red. Small articles are turned from it. [Illustration] OSAGE ORANGE [Illustration: OSAGE ORANGE] OSAGE ORANGE (_Toxylon Pomiferum_) Osage orange belongs to the mulberry family. There are fifty-four genera, three of which are found in the United States, the mulberries, the Osage orange, and the figs. Osage orange is known by several names, the principal one of which refers to the Osage Indians, who formerly lived in the region where the tree grows. It is called orange because the fruit, which is from two to five inches in diameter, looks like a green orange, but it is unfit for food. In its range most people call it bodark or bodock, that being a corruption of the name by which the French designated it, bois d’arc, which means bow wood. It was so called from the fact that Indians made bows of it when they could get nothing better. Its value as material for bows seems to be traditional and greatly overestimated. It is lower in elasticity than white oak and very much lower than hickory, and, theoretically, at least, it is not well suited for bows. The wood is known also as mock orange, bow-wood, Osage apple tree, yellow-wood, hedge, and hedge tree. The last name is given because many hedges have been made of it.