THE MYSTERY MULBERRY

MULBERRY LEAVES

BLACKBERRY-LIKE FRUIT

RIPE FRUIT WITH STEMS ATTACHED

 LEAF WITHOUT LOBES...

"MITTEN" LEAF

Monday,  7:30 AM. 70 degrees on the back porch, several degrees less directly on the lakefront.  Wind NW, calm at present. The sky is cloudy and overcast in the south and east and very hazy but clear to the north. The humidity is very high, at 92%.  The barometer is up slightly at 29.91".  We had an impressive thunderstorm last night, which we watched for some time while siting on the porch cooling off.  It gave us 3.25" of badly needed rain.

   Yesterday was unusually hot and oppressive, reaching 95 in the shade on the back porch.  An early evening convertible ride helped cool us off (we live without air conditioning).  Today is very busy, starting with a 9:30 AM Tree Board meeting. It should be somewhat more comfortable today.

   The mulberry tree in the wooded lot across the street is loaded with berries, which for some reason the bears haven't discovered as yet.  I have eaten my fill out of hand.  It is too hard to pick more than that.  The raspberry-like fruit is dark purple when ripe, but tastes rather bland unless absolutely falling-off ripe.  The white, or Russian mulberry, Morus alba, has long been planted for its fruit, and in the past many farmsteads had a mulberry tree. Its ripe fruit can be white to black or something in-between. Joan has fond memories of climbing the big Russian mulberry tree on her aunt's farm to pick enough berries to make mulberry jam.  She remembers them as being much bigger and sweeter than those from the tree across the street.  

   The native red mulberry, Morus rubra, is an occasional forest tree throughout much of the eastern and southeastern US.  It is occasionally found in southern to mid-Wisconsin. Both species have some of their leaves deeply lobed, sometimes being mitten-shaped; the white mulberry has more such leaves, in my experience. I would call our tree a red mulberry except for its far northern location. To add to the confusion, the two species often hybridize.  I may have to send a specimen to the UW Herbarium for identification, and if it is indeed M. rubra I will become rich and famous, and perhaps have a new sub-species named after me.  What would you think of Morus rubra var. Odaeensis? Just kidding.

   Mulberry tree leaves have in the past been used to feed silk "worms," which produce silk.  The red and white mulberry are in the mulberry family, the Moraceae.  Another tree, Broussonitia papyrifera, also in the mulberry family, has rather similar leaves and has  occasionally escaped from cultivation in the Southeast.  Silk making and raising silkworms on mulberry trees was a growth industry in the eastern  US in the 19th Century. Paterson, NJ was its center.  The effort did not last long, but some of its effects are still with us, such as the Gypsy moth, once used to produce silk along with other silk moths, and escaped into the wild.