Kevin's Watch

As Art/Able himself speculates, his entry into Aelfrice & the seven worlds seems to have commenced when he encountered a spiny orange tree and cut himself a walking stick with it. He still had it when he was brought to Parka, at which point it became his bow. It was said to be excellent for both purposes.

Trying to garner clues re what happened to Art, I started looking up "spiny orange" to see what uses, and mythological or other connections the tree has. Apparently this refers to the same fruit tree AKA "mandarin orange" which I presume is the source of the little sweet citrus sections that can be purchased in cans for use in salads. It has spines but doesn't seem to be particularly apt for use in walking sticks or bows as best as I can make out. I could find no particular Primary World mythological refs. While it is apparently grown as an ornamental & the climate of much of the US is suitable for it, it is said to be native to China and Korea. Hmmm, one of the frequent little Lupine refs to Korea again?

I searched the Urth mailing list but came up with no discussions of this particular topic. However, when I searched for "orange", I found an interesting reference to a walking stick handcarved for Wolfe by the late cartoonist Joe Mayhew, his close friend. It was made of osage orange, a totally different plant that is not a citrus at all. See Michael Straight's mail/post of 3/22/2002.

Interestingly enough, the osage orange, AKA mock orange, which is also spiny (used for barbed wire before that commodity was invented) is (per the American Heritage Dictionary 4th Ed) native to Arkansas and Texas. Hmmm again, a Texas ref now . Furthermore, Princeton's Wordnet 2000 states that it was used by the Indians to make bows, for which purpose other sources said it was highly esteemed by them! It also stated the plant was used as a boundary hedge. It certainly seems to have served that purpose for Art Ormsby! While the fruit is not palatable to humans, it isn't poisonous, a possibility I considered. See the Dictionary.com entry.

And with that, I've paused in my inquiries. Did Art confuse an osage orange for a "spiny"/mandarin orange? (Or, could the Osage be known in Texas colloquially as a "spiny orange" also?) And did Wolfe invent this bit of mythology as a tribute to Texas and the walking stick, or could there be some mythology, presumably Native American, connecting some tutelary spirits or "little people" to the "bow wood" tree.

Caer Bombadil wrote:
And with that, I've paused in my inquiries. Did Art confuse an osage orange for a "spiny"/mandarin orange? (Or, could the Osage be known in Texas colloquially as a "spiny orange" also?) And did Wolfe invent this bit of mythology as a tribute to Texas and the walking stick, or could there be some mythology, presumably Native American, connecting some tutelary spirits or "little people" to the "bow wood" tree.

I tend to agree with the colloquial/local name notion for the tree. I found definitions for both the osage orange and the mandarin orange that refer to the trees as "spiny." Another website showed a variation of the mandarin orange tree that produced a spiny fruit. Calling the tree a spiny orange seems to make sense.

Of course when I hear spiny I think Mario Bros. When Able made his bow from the Spiny orange, I envisioned one of those little spiky creatures bent like a bow. Damn video games ruined my mind.

A Spiny is a small, red, spike-backed creature found in many of Nintendo's Mario games.