Democratic Sentinel, Volume 20, Number 15, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 April 1896 — THE FIVE-FINGERED ORANGE. [ARTICLE]

THE FIVE-FINGERED ORANGE.

One of the Rarest Plants in the World, and It Wears Gloves. One of the rarest plants in the world is the five-lingered orange. The Japanese who, as well as the people of China, makes a specialty of cultivating ornamental curiosities in the vegetable world, consider this one of the most remarkable, and value it accordingly. But a single plant, which has been purchased and brought to San Francisco, where it now is, has. it is believed, ever left Japan. The plant that bears the extraordinary fruit is an eccentric member of the vegetable kingdom. It is a dwarfish tree, which when fully grown does not average mon* than" five or at most six feet in height, and is crooked enough to have been planted in the garden of the crooked man spoken of by Mother Goose: 1 "Who walked a crooked mile, Aud found a crooked sixpence, Against a crooked stile. He bought a crooked cat That caught a crooked mouse And tlrey all lived together In a crooked little house." For a crankeder plant does not exist. The gnarled trunk is tangled up with twisted branches, that, seem never to have (Cully made up their minds which ■way to go, so that It would indeed be a difficult task to find two const-cutive Inches in the whole tree whose lines of •direction are the same.. The consequencemf this is that the plant, which, if it could be straightened out, would be at least twice as taSl, Is as broad as it Is high. As fitting its cross-grained character, it has on hand hidden under its leaves and located in the most unexpected places, an unstinted supply ol long, tough, needle-ipolnted 'thorns that understand their business thoroughly. But all such little unpleasant peculiarities on the part-of the ifive-flngered Japan orange tree may 'wdll be forgotten when it is seem in July, covered Width Its beautiful blossoms, like those •Of an ordinary orange tree, Ibut 'tinted with a beautiful iiiiiik 'blush of color and exhaling a most delicate and delicious perfume, or later in the season, when its fruit has ripened, and it lookc ■asilf it was hung about with great yellow glovgg, These gloves :nne so redollent of the same perfume rtiiiat scent* the blossoms thirt the odor <can >be recognized a full mile from (Where the •oranges are growing. On (‘lose examination, however, the fruit proves to reseiilblen human hand more rtihan doei aify glove, .a lean, slender-fingered yellow Chinese hand, with thumb and forefingers complete, each finger tlpjied with the long nail, t hought so stylish In China, 'hard, pointed and claw-Mke., extending a goodly length beyond the ends of (the .digits. The hand Is partlj o]M*ned. ithe fingers curved a little upward, toward the palm, and the fruit itself very large, especially in proportion to the size of the tree that bears it. often reaching. when full grown, ten Inches measuring from tlie wrist tn the end of the middle finger, including the nail. Supports are always necessary, or the weight of the orange would tweak the branch upon which it grows. The contour of the hand exactly represents that of a human being, the proportional length of the several finger* and the thumb are correct, and even the cords on the back of the hand of a rather emaciated person are represented by the divisions of the fingers that can be traced from the point where they separate to the wrist. The fruit, though exhaling so delightful a perfume, is not edible, as it is not properly an orange at all, but belongs to the osage oranges, of the Madura, no member of which bears fruit that can be eaten.