Fall is here. Yes last week it seemed winter had arrived but more seasonal weather has returned.. The nights are cool. The mornings are crisp. The leaves are turning. It is a great time to visit Quartz Mountain. If at all possible treat yourself to a sunrise over Lake Altus-Lugert. The sun creeps from between the mountains to the east and a beautiful pinkish orange spreads across a nearly calm lake. Words do not do it justice. Come experience it for yourself. Remember the time change now has the sun rising closer to 7:00 than to 8:00.
If sunrise is way too early for you, why not visit Quartz Mountain an hour or so before sunset? The low angles of sunrise and sunset really seem to “light up” the fall foliage. The many yellows are brighter and the few reds almost glow from within. Virginia Creeper, Staghorn Sumac, Sand Plum and Poison Ivy provide the reds found in the park. Yellow is much more common and has a wider array of shades. Honey Mesquite, Walnuts and Soapberry are bright yellow. Hop trees have a slight tinge of lime green to their yellow, as do Catalpas. Some of the elms are yellow, while others have a more orange cast. However, as Quartz Mountain does not have maple trees, the really vibrant oranges and reds are not to be found.
Osage Oranges, hedge apples, monkey brains, or bodarks- whatever you call them, they’re starting to fall in large numbers. A more bizarre looking fruit may be hard to come by. About grapefruit sized the Osage Oranges are “tennis-ball” green and wrinkly.
Squirrels find these fruits tasty but challenging. Right now, the fruit is too large and hard for a squirrel to take a bite out of.
That does not stop the squirrels from gathering up the hedge apples now and placing them in the forks of trees for latter consumption. A
few freeze / thaw cycles softens them up. The Osage Orange has a milky sap that may cause skin irritations, but does not seem to be poisonous to animals. Cattle have died from eating the hedge apples but those cases have been from the hedge apple getting stuck in their throat and causing them to suffocate.
Folklore has Osage oranges causing roaches, boxelder beetles, crickets and spiders to flee from homes.
Of course, those claims must be taken with a grain of salt. One must also consider the fondness squirrels have for hedge apples. You may free your home of annoying insects, only to attract pesky squirrels!