FOREST TREES. 



173 



purple when fully ripe. Wood yellow, very heavy and durable, 

 valuable for fence posts, much used when obtainable for tool 

 handles. Usually a small tree, but sometimes found sixty to 

 seventy feet high, with a stem two feet in diameter. Found in 

 no considerable abundance anywhere, but distributed over the 

 country from Western Massachusetts and Vermont, west to the 

 Rocky Mountains, and south to Florida, Texas and Mexico. 



M. microphylla, Buckley, is probably only a southern form or 

 variety, with smaller and rougher leaves. Fruit small, sour 

 and black, Texas, and westward to Arizona. 



FOREIG^q- SPECIES AKD VARIETIES. 



Morns alba, L. — White Mulberry. — Leaves heart-shaped, 

 pointed, serrate, smooth and shining. Fruit white, sweet, but 

 rather insipid. A tree early introduced into the United States, 

 and is naturalized and run wild in the Eastern States. A low 

 growing tree, but with stem from one to three feet in diameter. 

 There are more than a dozen distinct varieties in cultivation. 

 Among the oldest and best known, I may name the M, multi- 

 caulis, supposed to be one of the best for feeding silk-worms. 

 Rather more tender than the species, the latter being quite 

 hardy in nearly all of our Northern States, while the former is 

 often winter killed, even in the latitude of New York City. 

 The Downing's Everbearing Mulberry is a seedUng of the multi- 

 caulis, but with very large black fruit, of a rich, sprightly sub- 

 acid flavor. M. alba, var. tartarica, has recently been highly ex- 

 tolled as a timber tree, under the name of Russian Mulberry. 

 It is a rapid growing tree, readily propagated by cuttings or 

 seed, and is said to thrive in the dry soils of the western 

 prairies, where it is quite extensively cultivated by the Men- 

 nonites, who brought it with them from Russia, but the 

 same tree has long been known in our Eastern States as the 

 Tartarian Mulberry. The mulberries are handsome trees of 

 rapid growth, although they seldom reach a large size. The 

 leaves of the White Mulberry, and many of its varieties, have 

 for ages been used for feeding the silk-worm in China and 

 other countries. The larger-leaved varieties are preferred to 

 the smaller for feeding the worm, and some are more tender 

 and better adapted to this purpose than others. All the species 

 and varieties of the mulberry put out their leaves late in 

 spring. The West India Mulberry, M, tinctoria, yields the 

 well known Fustic wood of commerce. 



