Hybrid Hickories, life size. 
stead of cherries. I don’t -vouch for 
this, but certainly the birds like Mul- 
berries. 
The Mulberry tree is one of the most 
fruitful trees known, particularly the 
everbearing varieties, like the ones 
which I offer. Perhaps one'reason the 
tree is able to produce such quantities 
of fruit is the fact that it never carries 
its whole crop at one time. While some 
Mulberries are ripe, 14% inches long, 
as thick as your little finger, others 
are little embryos about the size of 
a grain of wheat, so that the tree that 
produces a half ton of fruit may never 
have more than 200 pounds on at one 
time. 
They are certainly a good use to 
make of the poultry yard space be- 
cause the chickens love to pick them 
up and eat them. 
In parts of North Carolina an acre - 
or so of Mulberries is a common part 
of the system for providing the family 
pork. I have seen farmer after farmer 
in that state who was perfectly sure 
that an acre of everbearing Mulberries 
with its 10 to 12 weeks of automatic 
big feeding, did him as much good as 
an acre of corn—and note this—the 
pigs did the harvesting, while the trees 
needed no cultivation. 
The tree is easy to transplant, a rapid 
grower, and a great encouragement to 
the beginning horticulturist because, in_ 
addition to these qualities, it gets into 
bearing very early, and sometimes it 
will make a second set of buds if the 
frost kills the first ones. 
Honey Locust 
When it comes to awarding the first 
prize for neglected opportunities in 
American crop plants, we would have 
a hard run between the Persimmon 
and the Honey Locust, but I think the 
prize goes to the Honey Locust because 
of its great promise as a forage crop 
and possibly a National sugar supply. 
The Honey Locust tree bears beans. 
Some of them are long beans having 
sugary nutriment in the pods around 
the seeds. Indeed, the Honey Locust 
pod is one of the richest sugar plants 
20 
F—Fairbanks. S—Stratford 
known, and the beans from thousands 
of different trees in half a dozen dif- 
ferent states have been greedily eaten 
by cattle for decades, and the farmer 
did not seem to see that here was a 
great potential crop. 
Stock Food That Grows on Trees 
and Has No Harvest Cost 
Some years ago I offered prizes for 
the best beans and one lot measured 16 
inches long, weighed 17 to the pound 
when bone dry and analyzed 29% su- 
gar. Further search has brought in 
beans analyzing 35% sugar. The seed 
is high in protein. In rare trees it is 
embedded in sugary pulp that is some- 
times sticky like honey. That explains 
why children and farm stock eat these 
pods so keenly. Millions of -children 
have eaten them. Miss Williams, the 
owner of a 400-acre farm in Georgia, 
reports that she has “a great many 
trees in pastures where the cattle can 
pick up the pods as they fall.” 
Miss Williams states that very often 
several head of young stock are left out 
all winter to feed on the Honey Locust 
and that such animals are in excellent 
condition in the spring. 
Another farmer says “and all bear 
an awful big crop of beans, which the 
stock like so well that they will break 
down the fence to get them.” 
I know one farmer in North Carolina 
who regularly gathers Honey Locust 
beans, grinds them in a swing hammer 
sand machine, mixes them with ground 
grains as a part of his standard ration 
for the dairy cows. 
I have a few trees grown from cions 
from the trees producing beans that 
analyze above 30% sugar. Persons who 
wish to enrich their pastures and check 
soil erosion should experiment with 
these trees. 
The farm animals will do the har- 
vesting. 
The Honey Locust appears to be a 
kind of goat among trees. It grows 
farther out in the Great Plains than 
any other tree producing a useful har- 
vest. 
