MYSTERY MULBERRY

THE MYSTERY MULBERRY TREE, STORM DAMAGED AND LEANING...

...CONTINUES TO BEAR HEAVILY...

...LOADED WITH FRUIT THIS YEAR (unripe at this time)

Thursday, 7:15 AM.  64 degrees F at the ferry dock, 62 on the back porch.  Wind variable and calm, with occasional very light gusts.  The sky is overcast, the humidity 92%.  The barometer is falling, now at 29.81".  Rain is predicted by this evening, and really seems imminent at present.

   The mystery mulberry tree in the woods across the street is bearing exceptionally heavily this year, and since it was blown partially over a few years back some of the branches are easy to reach.  If I can get to the ripe fruit before the birds and bears I intend to pick enough for a mulberry pie.  Mulberries are sweet and delicious but don't ripen all at once and are soft, so are not a practical commercial crop.  But they are great eaten fresh, in preserves and for wine.

   I call it the mystery mulberry because it appears, by fruit and leaves, to be a red mulberry, Morus rubra (in the Mulberry Family, the Moraceae), which is not known to grow much further north in Wisconsin than Green Bay. In both neighboring Michigan and Minnesota it is only know to occur north to mid-state, and in Canada only rarely in southern Ontario.
    Red mulberry would be perfectly hardy here along the lake but  the native red mulberry is uncommon at best in the state, and the European white mulberry, Morus alba, might be more likely to have been planted here, as it once was a popular tree on farmsteads.  Joan has fond memories of climbing her aunt's mulberry tree to pick berries and being died pretty much blue by the time she came down.

   Perhaps the mystery mulberry is a hybrid between the red and the white, but if so it definitely favors the red parent.  So unless an expert in mulberries renders a definitive opinion, I will continue to call it a mystery.
   It is no mystery, however, how tasty the berries are.