102 
BOTANICAJL IXDEX. 
black and sour, with little juice and deep sinuses between theaclienia, which are a 
little compressed, styles divaricate and obtuse; leaves generally entire, an inch or one 
and a half long and of about the same width; the lobed leaves about two and a half 
inches long, the middle lobe prolonged and acuminate. Stem and branches smooth 
with a light grey bark. A large shrub or small tree from 12 to 20 feet high growing 
in clumps on hill of Western Texas.” 6 e s 
Although the red mulberry is per- 
haps never grown for its fruit, it is 
nevertheless a good fruit, of a dark 
red color, turning purple, very sweet, 
in form cylindrical or like a large 
blackberry, ripening all summer from 
July. Dr. Darlington, who was one 
of the best observers America ever 
produced, says of it in his Flora 
Cestrica, “fruit preferred to that of 
any other variety known here.” They 
usually form low, spreading trees in 
rich woods or near the banks of 
streams of water from Florida to 
about latitude 42° north. They be- 
long to the class of milky-juiced trees 
(Indian Rubber) which are so rarely 
met with in the temperate zone, but 
are so abundant in the tropics. The 
leaves are large, often 6 or 8 inches 
long, heart-shaped, pointed, rough 
above with a white down underneath, 
especially on leaves of young and 
vigorous growing shoots, when they 
sye also often palmately lobed with 
3 or 5-lobes. Flowers produced in 
Fig. 217. Downing' s Ever Bearing Mulberry. 
May, numerous, small inconspicuous, greenish-white, with a small 4-parted calyx, 
lobes ovate, 4-stamens, 2-styles, ovary 2-celled but one small and soon disappearing, stig- 
matic on the inner side, but each flower is arranged in an aggregate, catkin-like 
spike, achenia; mostly monoecious, the two kinds in separate spikes. The staminate 
spikes (the flowers of which are imperfect of course) are nearly 2 inches long, slen- 
der, drooping and soon falling off; the pistillate or fertile ones usually about an inch 
long, oblong or ovate in form, and each flower becomes a separate berry, akene ; 
which is covered by the thickened, succulent calyx, bracts, etc., of the flower and 
becoming a compressed, ovate, juicy fruit, which, adhering to the achenia in a 
crowded mass', form a multiple fruit, which botanists term a sorosis. Each little 
pulpy nodule then, represents a separate flower, the calyx of which is the delicious 
fruit we all admire; “so under the name of fruit very different things are eaten. In 
