MULBERRY FAMILY 



styles two, thread-like ; ovary two-celled, one cell small and finally 

 disappearing. 



Fruit. — Compound, consisting of drupes each inclosed in a 

 thickened, fleshy calyx. Bright red at first, finally dark purple, 

 sweet and juicy ; about an inch long. July. 



The tree (the Mulberry) is found in abundance in the nortliwestern parts 



of Florida. The Choctaws put its inner bark in hot water along with a quantity 



of ashes and obtain filaments, with which they weave a kind of cloth not unlike 



a coarse hempen cloth. 



— ROMANS'S "Natural History of Florida." 



There are three well known mulberries, the Red, the 

 Black, and the White ; so named because of the color of their 

 fruit. The Red Mulberry is the American species and bears 

 the characteristic berry of the genus which is 

 an aggregate fruit of many drupes. It resem- 

 bles a blackberry. In ripening it is first red, 

 then dark purple. In taste it is rather insipid, 

 but is loved by the birds. 



The Red Mulberry is generally distributed, 

 but rarely attains great size. Standing in the 

 southern forests it reaches the height of seventy 

 feet, but ordinarily it is a low broad branched 

 tree with trunk proportionately thickened. Like 

 the Sassafras it bears leaves varying in form, 

 some heart-shaped and others lobed. But these 

 leaves are too thick and rough even when young 

 to make proper food for the silkworm, which 

 in a cold climate, feeds with advantage on the 

 leaves of the White Mulberry only. 

 Professor Sargent says of it, " Surpassing as it does in 

 height and breadth all mulberry trees of temperate regions, 

 the dense shade afforded by its broad compact crown of 

 dark blue green leaves, its freedom from disease and the 

 attacks of disfiguring insects, its prolificness, its hardiness 

 except in its earliest years, and the rapidity of its growth in 

 good soil, make it a most desirable ornamental tree." 



The Black Mulberry, Morus nigra, is the tree common in 

 Europe, introduced it is supposed from Persia, that native 



254 



Fruit of Red 

 Mulberry, 

 Morus ru- 

 bra, about 

 i' long. 



