Hedge apples are fascinating. They’re too large/unpalatable to be eaten by humans or almost any (living) animal. The species is an evolutionary anachronism—a “ghost” of evolution—that co-evolved to be spread by huge extinct animals like mammoths or giant sloths (Thread to come) Hedge apples were likely dispersed by giant extinct fauna: mammoths, mastodons, and possibly ground-sloths. Today no species besides humans efficiently spreads their seeds. Their range pre-European settlement was mostly restricted to TX and OK.
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