Mulberries. 309 



fruits, planted seeds of this mulberry and raised the Downing 

 mulberry, which, is now grown for its fruit. 



This was not the beginning of American mulberry cultivation, 

 although it was far the most important contribution to it. Before 

 this time various forms of mulberries had been introduced, but 

 mostly for the purpose of feeding silk worms. Benjamin Frank- 

 lin had demonstrated that good silk can be grown in this country. 

 McMahon, 1806, had urged the cultivation of the mulberry for 

 fruit and for hedges as well as for silk. In 1806, too, Frederick 

 Pursh, a botanical traveler, found mulberries cultivated in| 

 orchards near Cayuga lake, N, Y., " may be for the raising of silk- 

 worms, as the trees were low and planted in regular close rows." 

 William Prince, in 1828, regarded the Black Persian and the 

 wild native red mulberry as the best for fruit, and be enumerates 

 several kinds for silk. Among other sorts which were intro- 

 duced in the early days was Morus Tatarica, which has latelyj 

 reapi>eared as the Russian mulberry. So far, there appear to 

 have been no varieties of any species of American origin. It is 

 a isig-nificant fact that the first named variety originating in this 

 country is an offspring of our own wild Morus rubra. This is the 

 Johnson. The first mention of it, so far as I know, is in the first 

 edition of Downing'® " Fruits and Fruit Trees " in 1845. 



I have said that the botany of the mulberries is perplexing. 

 This is notoriously the case in every country where they are cul- 

 tivated. There appears to be three well marked general types in 

 cultivation, the white, black and red — Morus alba, M. nigra, M. 

 rubra. I must warn my readers that these names do not desig- 

 nate the color of the fruits of the respective species, although 

 they were no doubt meant to distinguish them. Our native 

 Morus rubra bears somewhat redder fruits than the others; 

 fruits of the black mulberry are black, but so are those of the 

 white mulberry in many cases. Perhaps we can apply the 

 terms white and black in a general way to the color of the foliage, 

 as that of M. alba is much lighter than that of M. nigra. The 

 white mulberiy is the species most used for silk. It has 

 been cultivated in many countries for many centuries, and, as a 



