THE WHITE MULBERRY 



Morus alba L. MORACEAE-URTICACEAE. 



Ma.\tese=ctausra. Italian=jv/^. French=murter blanc, murier. 



The white mulberry or simply, the mulberry, is 

 native of China and its cultivation in Europe dates from 

 the middle of the sixth century, when its seeds were intro- 

 duced into Constantinople along with the eggs of the 

 silkworm, by two Benedictine monks on their return 

 from the Far East. The mulberry is a large tree, 

 leafless in winter, with alternate cordate and serrate 

 leaves, sometimes lobed and acuminate. The flowers 

 are produced in small and short catkins at the axilla of 

 the leaf on the new twig, and come out along with the 

 foliage. The individual fruit produced by each flower 

 is a small one-seeded berry, the berries being closely 

 packed together so as to form the fruit of the mulberry, 

 this type of composite fruit being known botanically as 

 sorosium. The tree is polygamous like the carob tree ; 

 the male and female flowers are produced in the same 

 catkin, or in different catkins on the same twigs, but 

 occasionally trees produce exclusively male catkins or 

 female catkins. 



The mulberry lives to a great age, and may have a 

 trunk of one metre or more, in diameter. It agrees with 

 all soils and all situations, but its powerful root system 

 delights in a deep soil, and is not so decidedly a surface 

 feeder as the fig tree. In a deep soil, with a moderately 

 moist and porous subsoil growth is very rapid. The tree 

 like its congener the black mulberry, exudes a yellowish 

 liquid when wounded during active vegetation, and on 

 this account both trees are popularly classed together as 

 ' 'milky trees", and this classification happens to be an 

 accurate one both scientifically and practically. The 



