Its getting that time of year when you have to police the yard before mowing. Anyone from the south that has a Magnolia tree knows what I'm talking about. If you hit one of the seed pods with the mower it sounds like the blade has exploded and disintegrated.

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Mike in SouthCentral Kentucky

Between them and green pine cones, we Southern lads never were at a loss for handy grenades in our neighborhood war games.

Many a Purple Heart was earned that matched the bruises they'd leave, too!

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Ukraine -- now more than ever

I have 2 Magnolia trees and I start mowing about 3 mower widths away from the mulch at the tree with the blower to the inside and keep circling in until I get to the mulch. I think they are pretty and the blooms smell good but they are a messy tree. Larry

Not to diminish the impact of mowing Magnolia seed pods, but this year with all the rain we had a bumper crop of black walnuts. Talk about hand grenades...these are tennis ball sized missiles when sucked up and discharged from the riding mower.

I was a green apple man myself.

Hard as rocks and almost as aerodynamic as a baseball. I threw one through a thin hedge once, hit a kid in the head, and knocked him to his knees.

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Oh well, what the hell.

We were so poor I'd have gottan a whuppin' for throwing a perfectly good apple at somebody, no matter how much he deserved/asked-for it.

Nah, just kiddin'. We didn't have any apple trees in the yard or the neighborhood, but there were a few crabapples around, and those would do in a pinch.

Of course, nothing compared to a good ol' dirt "clog" when it came to surface-to-surface warfare. The way I would tell it, I threw one through a thin hedge one time, hit a kid in the head with it, and put him in the hospital for a week.

But that's for another thread. I've derailed this one long enough. Magnolias, by the way, in addition to having great productivity in the neighborhood arms race (Magnolia Assured Destruction), they were great climbing trees too, with those limbs that started practically at ground level for those verically-challenged climbers amongst us.

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Ukraine -- now more than ever

Or up here we used Hedgeapples.
Great grenades.

Chuck

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They hold no Quarter

Try mowing a lawn littered with fermenting "Persimmons".

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NULLI SECUNDUS

I wasted many an enemy pillbox with Magnolia hand grenades, as a boy. Usually mopped up with a baseball bat M1.

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Wayne
Torn & Frayed

Dang, glad I didn't grow up in your neighborhood. Around here there are a few Hedge apple trees upwards to 30-40 feet. I've seen damage to cars that have been hit with incoming Hedge apples.

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Mike in SouthCentral Kentucky

That's just awful! Reprehensible! Do you suppose we're related?

Back to the grenades: one place I lived we engaged in horse apple fights. There was a pasture nearby that was our ammunition, you should pardon the expression, dump.

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Oh well, what the hell.

Leave us not forget about the ever popular sweetgum trees. Those sweetgum balls can raise a nice whelp on a young boys skin should a "war" break out when those little missiles are fallin' on the ground.

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Real men love cats!

Our climbing tree was a pear tree. Before they were ripe they could inflict real damage. Ripe ones were almost as bad. I hate the grainy taste of pears. Why couldn't we have had an apple tree?

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Regards, Ron
USASA 1965/69

When I was a kid I was working on a truck farm bunching radishs with a bunch of other kids. I was on my knees with my head down when a kid threw a oversize radish at me about the size of a small fist. It may as well have been a rock. It felt like a hammer hit me along side the head. I seldom have got as mad as I did then. I got ahold of him and was probly choking him out. I really cant blame him what he did to survive. He got his fingers between my lower teeth and lower lip and tore my lip away from my jaw! That wasnt the end of it, he had two older brothers that dived in and thumped me too! I remember we got a 1/2 cent apiece to wrap a bunch together. A crate was 48 bunchs so we got 24 cents to do buch a crate. You might make $6 to $10s a day if you were fast and worked hard.
I think all young people need to do that for a summer. Might learn to respect other peoples property when you see what it takes to earn it.

First thing I thought of, when I saw the posts about the hedgeapples, was "road apples"....

A road apple war, now that's probably the origin of "War is hell."

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Ukraine -- now more than ever

Merrill, you never cease to amaze. And I really like the way you write! You oughta put together all of your posts on here about the times you've had, and turn it into a book -- if you haven't already. Don't change a thing, either -- just like you wrote it here.

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Ukraine -- now more than ever

I have heard the road apples also called horse apples although I've never seen horses eat them. I think the local name is the Bois D'Arc apple tree. I can testify they pack a punch.

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I am a sheep dog!
1601 (ret)

Well,I threw many a Magnolia grenade growing up during WWII.But now,don't all of you understand just how dangerous they are,and how their use leads to uncontrolled aggressive behavior.We are probably the same people who used their index finger and cocked thumb to intimidate others.Were you also bullies who pulled pigtails.Shame on all of us.We are probably the reason our country is in the condition it is today.Oh, the horror!