Nature Bulletin No. 498-A   September 15, 1973
Forest Preserve District of Cook County
George W. Dunne, President
Roland F. Eisenbeis, Supt. of Conservation

****:THE MULBERRIES

Here we go round the mulberry bush,
The mulberry bush, the mulberry bush,
Here we go round the mulberry bush,
So early in the morning.

This Mother Goose jingle alludes to the lure that a mulberry tree, laden 
with ripening fruit, has for children and for throngs of birds that feast 
upon it from dawn until dark.

Our Red Mulberry, native to the eastern half of the United States, is the 
largest of about a dozen species found in temperate regions of both the 
Old and New Worlds. A small to medium-sized tree with a round-
topped crown, it is commonly 25 to 40 feet -- tall and 12 to 18 inches in 
diameter, although sometimes much larger in southern bottomlands 
where it is more numerous. Most of its leaves, edged with coarse teeth, 
are oval or heart-shaped but some are deeply cut into two lobes, like 
mittens, and some into three .

The inconspicuous male and female flowers, both like small catkins, are 
usually borne on different trees 90 that some produce pollen and others 
bear fruit. The fruit is reddish purple or black and resembles a slender 
blackberry about an inch long. They are very juicy and have a fine 
flavor when eaten raw or made into pies, jellies and jams. But they are 
too soft to market and soon fall on the ground. The golden-brown 
mulberry wood is soft and weak but so durable in soil that farmers prize 
the trees for fence posts. The Indians made ropes, thread, and woven 
cloth from the fibrous inner bark.

The White Mulberry has been cultivated in China for thousands of 
years to furnish food for the silkworm. The caterpillars, reared on trays, 
are fed freshly picked mulberry leaves several times daily until, when 
mature, each spins a cocoon of silken filaments. These are later 
unwound and spun into thread -- a laborious process. This industry and 
its cultivation of the white mulberry spread to Japan, India and other 
parts of the Orient. It reached Asia Minor during the Roman Empire, 
France during the 1600'8, and was brought to Virginia in 1631.

After many failures in the American colonies, because of the amount of 
cheap labor required, that idea was abandoned but the white mulberry 
escaped and has spread until, in most regions, it outnumbers our native 
red mulberry. Its fruit -- white, pink or even purple -- is so small and 
insipid that it is usually ignored but many ornamental kinds have been 
developed from this species.

One of the most common is the Russian Mulberry used for clipped 
hedges and other landscape plantings. An especially hardy bushy type 
was introduced into some of our western states by Russian Mennonites 
to serve as windbreaks. One of the most popular ornamentals, the Teas 
Weeping Mulberry, is produced by rafting a Teas variety onto the top 
of a straight trunk of an ordinary Russian mulberry. The Paper 
Mulberry of eastern Asia and South Pacific island is the source of the 
famous tapa cloth -- some of it thin as paper, some like leather -- 
prepared by properly soaking and pounding the inner bark.

That Mother Goose rhyme is for the birds.