MOEACE^. 



SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 



83 



MORUS CELTIDIFOLIA. 



Mulberry. Mexican Mulberry. 



Leaves ovate, smooth or scabrous on the upper, glabrous or pubescent on the lower 

 surface. Fruit subglobose or short-ovate, nearly black. 



Morus celtidifolia, Humboldt, Bonpland & Kunth, Nov. Morus Mexicana, Bentham, PI. Hartweg. 71 (1839). 



Gen. et Spec. li. 33 (1817). — Kunth, Syn. Fl. jEquin. 

 i. 370. — Rafinesque, Am. Man. Mulberry Trees, 32, 

 Dietrich, Syn. i. 551. — Bureau, De Candolle Prodr, 



« • 



XVll. 



246. 



Hemsley, Bot, Biol. Am. Cent. iii. 141. 



Sargent, Garden and Forest^ ii. 448. 



Llebmann, Dansk. Vidensk. Selsk. Skrift. ser. 5, ii. 314. 

 Morus microphylla, Buckley, Proc. Phil. Acad. 1862, 

 8. — Gray, Proc. Phil Acad. 1862, 167. — Sargent, For- 

 est Trees N. Am. 10th Census U. S. ix. 128. — Coulter, 

 Contrib. U. S. Nat. Herh. ii. 408 {Man. PL W. Texas). 



A tree^ sometimes thirty feet in height in the United States^ with a trunk occasionally twelve to 

 fourteen inches in diameter, or usually much smaller, and often reduced to a low shrub ; or in northern 

 Mexico frequently much larger. The bark of the trunk is smooth, sometimes nearly half an inch thick, 

 although usually thinner, light gray, slightly tinged with red, deeply furrowed and broken on the 

 surface into small appressed scales. The branchlets, when they first appear, are covered with soft white 

 hairs ; they soon become glabrous or nearly so, and during their first winter are hght orange-red 

 marked with small lenticels, and with small horizontal nearly orbicular elevated concave leaf-scars in 

 which appears a ring of fibro-vascular bundle-scars. The buds are ovate, acute, sharp-pointed, and 

 covered with thin lustrous chestnut-brown ovate rounded scales, scarious on the margins ; those of the 



oblong, rounded at the 



coated on the outer surface with pal 



in 



pubescence, and nearly an inch long when fully grown. The leaves are ovate, acute or acuminate at 

 the apex, rounded or rarely truncate at the broad base, and coarsely and sharply serrate, or often, 

 especially on vigorous shoots, they are three-lobed with shallow lateral sinuses and broad coarsely 

 serrate lobes, and are then frequently cordate at the base ; when they unfold they are coated below and 

 on the petioles with pale tomentum, and are puberulous above ; and at maturity they are thin and firm 

 texture, dark green and often roughened on the upper surface with minute pale tubercles, and 

 paler, smooth or scabrate on the lower surface, which is glabrous or coated with soft pale pubescence, 

 and often hirsute with short stiff pale hairs on the broad orange-colored ribs and on the primary veins, 

 which are arcuate and united near the margins, and connected by conspicuous reticulate veinlets ; on 

 wild trees in the United States they are rarely more than an inch and a half in length and three 

 quarters of an inch to an inch in width, and are borne on slender pubescent petioles, one third of an 

 inch long ; on trees cultivated in northern Mexico the leaves are thinner, smoother, and often four or 

 five inches long, and two to three inches wide. The stipules are linear-lanceolate, acute, sometimes 

 falcate, white and scarious, coated with soft pale tomentum, and about half an inch in length. The 

 leaves turn yellow in the autumn before falling. The flowers open from March in the Texas lowlands 

 to April and May on the mountains of Chihuahua and New Mexico ; they are usually dioecious, and are 

 borne on slender hairy peduncles produced in the axils of the caducous bud-scales or of the first leaves, 



males being short-pedicellate in short many-flowered spikes one half to three quarters of 



ch 



& 



and the females sessile in few-flowered spikes, which rarely exceed one third of an inch in length 



The calyx of the staminate flower is dark green, covered on the 



rface with soft pale hairs, and 



deeply divided 



four equal rounded lobes, reddish toward the apex. The stamens are inserted 



' slightly flattened 



under the margin of the minute rudimentary ovary, and are composed of slender sli< 



brio-ht yellow anthers, with conspicuous darker green connectives. The calyx of the pistillate flo 



