Red Mullberry 



365 



there is a rudimentary ovar\\ The pistillate catkins are shorter, their flowers 

 sessile, dark green, deeply and unequally 4-parted; the lobes rounded and some- 

 what hair)'; ovary flattish, green and smooth; the short style is branched into 2 

 white stigmas. The fruit ripens in May and June, is oval-oblong, i to 1.5 cm. 

 long, deep purple or black, rather acid and not very palatable; the nutlets are 

 light brown. 



The w^ood is hard, close-grained, elastic and light brown; its specific gravity 

 is about 0.77. The Indians of Texas are said to have made their bows of this 

 wood. This tree has been confused with the Mexican mulberry, Morus celtidi folia 

 H. B. K., which has larger, more elongated, taper-pointed and finely toothed leaves, 

 and from which it also differs by its small useless fruit. 



4. RED MULBERRY Morus rubra Linnaus 



This, the largest of our Mulberry trees, occurs mostly in woods of river valleys 

 or on moist hillsides, from Massachusetts to Ontario, Michigan, and Nebraska, 

 southward to Florida and Texas, attaining its greatest height of about 20 meters, 

 and 2.5 meters in trunk diameter, in the central States; it grows also in Bermuda. 

 It is also called Black mulberry, and Virginia mulberry. 



The trunk is stout and rather short, the lower branches are stout and spread- 

 ing, uncrowded trees becoming round- 

 topped; the bark is about 18 mm. thick, 

 fissured into long plates, the surface 

 broken into long close scales of a dark 

 reddish brown color; the twigs are slen- 

 der, dark green, with a reddish tinge, 

 with large raised leaf scars, eventually 

 becoming dark brown. The winter buds 

 are ovoid, 6 mm. long, blunt, covered 

 by shining scales. The leaves are thin, 

 or membranous, ovate, or ovate-orbicu- 

 lar, 10 to 20 cm. long, abruptly taper- 

 pointed, rounded or heart-shaped at the 

 base, singly or doubly toothed on the mar- 

 gin, or 3-lobed, yellowish green, sHghtly 

 hairy above, white-woolly beneath when 

 unfolding, becoming dark green, smooth 

 or nearly so above, pale, more or less 

 white-hair}^, especially about the yel- 

 lowish venation, or sometimes soft-hairy all over, beneath. The leaves turn bright 

 yellow before falHng in the early autumn; leaf-stalk stout, round, 1.5 to 3 cm. 

 long; stipules large, conspicuous, yellowish, falling away early. The flowers 

 appear with the leaves. The staminate catkins are slender, cylindric, 2.5 to 5 



Fig. 324. Red Mulberry. 



