Hedge Apple burns really hot. My stove is welded HR Steel, boiler plate, can take the heat, but I don't like to stoke it more than 1 or 2 chunks at a time, and I try to save it for really cold weather.

I logged hedge for the archery industry for a good ten years. Burned 5 or 6 cord a year. Here are my thoughts:
Once seasoned it is a good long lasting wood, never had problems in my Fisher stove getting it to burn with normal air settings, and if your stove is airtight it will be fine unless you forget the vents wide open with a fresh load of wood and leave for a few hours. Then your fisher may have a slightly new shape with droopy corners - like mine became - when you return, if there is anything left to return to… my place at the time was made of steel and could not be burned down.
Splits decent, but not easy either. Tends to have “splinters” when it is split my hand, and those will chew up your maul handle even with perfect hits and even with good straight grained wood. I learned to hit in the near edge so the maul handle stayed outside the log.
If you leave a load to smolder overnight in an airtight stove, be ready when you open those doors in the morning. It does not just pop a lot, it is fireworks, and will literally send little exploding embers up to 10 feet. That is not an exaggeration or a joke. It will coat the floor area in front of the doors with little embers that come popping out like you will never see with another wood.
Leaves a decent amount of ash in a box stove, much better in a stove with a grate and ash pan.
Overall, I like osage as much as any of the second tier woods. The popping flying coals are the biggest drawback, it last long and burns hot once seasoned.
IMO there is only one first tier wood, nothing else even compares. What is the BEST OF THE BEST of all the trees for firewood in the midwest? There is only one answer, and yoteskinner gave it to you. Black locust. Low ash like red oak, splits like a dream, lights easy as anything, gives heat fast like dead elm, burns hot, holds fire a long time, stays good in the woods for years standing or laying down, will burn green the day you cut it and just gets better from there. Ive been heating with only wood for over 30 years, from cottonwood to hedge, and when all factors are considered nothing beats locust. Nothing.

It is good for smoking meat with also, makes a great coal base and has a unique flavor to it. I have burned a bunch in the wood stove and cooked with it a bunch.

When cut and even split and set as fence post's when green, it will sprout and take root, thats where most of the Hedge fence rows came from!

I don't think that's how OUR hedge rows started, but that's definitely interesting.

We must have different locust here. Hedge is by far the best we have.

Haha. Yeah its personal opinion after considering a lot of factors - I prefer the locust by far. If that hedge didn’t pop so much, and maybe left less ash and coals in a box stove….
If I had a stove with a grate and ash pan and updraft air supply, I might give hedge the nod. But I really dont know because all I have ever had was a box stove. Hedge has the edge on BTU for sure, but that is just one of many factors for me.

A story you might find interesting.
When I was logging hedge, I was talking to a farmer who had several miles of hedgerows, and I asked him about a section of hedge that only had a few trees left like it had been cut recently. He said “Nope. Grass fire went through. Burned the trees off.” I just looked at him puzzled and asked how, were the trees dead? “Nope, just a regular quick grass fire, didnt take but a few minutes and the grass was burned”. He explained that after the grass burned along the row, the trees smoldered around the bases for several weeks, and every day a few more would fall. Maybe 2/3 of the trees in that row burned off at the base over the course of those weeks. I found it hard to believe, but then another farmer told a similar tale a few years later. So hedge must burn green also. I always had so much I seasoned it two years or more, don’t recall ever trying to burn it green. I have burned locust green, and it burns better after a bit of drying time, but it does put out good heat burning green.

Ive never heard of this. I know a lot of people with osage post fencerows, and I have put in a few hedge posts myself. Never seen one take root. Not saying it’s impossible but I have never seen it.

I have read several historical accounts of planting hedgerows. Typically the hedge apples were put in a barrel after being left through a winter until they became mushy, then if not runny enough water was added and the slurry was ladled into a shallow furrow. They sprout like crazy like this, I tried it. Then to make a “living fence” the row is trimmed knee high every several years and the stumps sprout back with thorny and thick growth that is about impenetrable. Eventually one or two of the suckers takes over and starts to grow a tall tree, and that is cut off again to start the cycle over.
Also, if a hedge tree is left to grow from seed, it will typically make a scrubby, wide, medium height tree with very little or none good straight trees for bows. But when the trees are coppiced and then one of the suckers is allowed to grow, they tend to shoot up tall and straight making decent archery wood and lumber. I first heard that in the book “Hunting the Osage Bow” by Dean Torges, and after seeing the hedge in its native ramge in Oklahoma and texas, and comparing that to midwest hedgerows, I think he was correct.

Don't burn it in a stove with a glass window , it can break the glass.

Osage Orange is kind of an oily wood, maybe that's why those tree's died off, it supported the fire.

I burn a lot of hedge, it does burn very hot, and pop a lot.

Now I have to cut some for my bonfires. I like a popping crackling bonfire.

ADC - oddly enough it only seems to throw embers like that after it smolders overnight with the air locked down and then the air hits it when I open the doors in the morning. Still pops sometimes when open air burning, but nothing close to the floor-coating fireworks after locking it down overnight.

Osage orange is not the only wood that does that. I've opened the door of my woodstove after being damped down over night and gotten a shower of sparks and crackling from oak and maple too.

Black locust is my favorite wood too. Honey locust is decent but not as good as black as it's a sweet wood and bugs really like to get into eat. Especially termites. Don't store honey locust near a building. Personal experience.
A couple of farmer brothers I knew burned green honey locust with green hedge. It worked for them but different stoves have different appetites for burning green wood. I avoid green woods of all kind myself. Some green wood will build creosote in the chimney and stove pipes and I like to avoid that.

What is the difference between honey locust and black locust? I understand this is an ignorant question. But my curiosity is killing me.

I'll post pics when pics is fixed.
Honey locust has the big nasty thorns, smooth bark, and seed pods about 8-10" long.
Black Locust has very few thorns, rough bark, and very small seed pods.

I burn it often, Season it for three years or it will load your chimney up some. I mix it with other wood. It leaves the least amount of ash of all the wood I burn here. I would not pack your wood burner full of it....

So what's the best for what I want?

Sassafras. Or white cedar.