Time to harvest mulberries

The American Red Mulberry (Morus rubra L.) is native to eastern United States from Massachusetts to Kansas and down to the Gulf coast and is now starting to fruit. It is a small tree, usually 20 to 30 feet tall but in the South on rich soils the red mulberry can reach 70 ft. in height.With large alternate, deciduous, toothed and often variously lobed leaves. It is by no means unusual for a Mulberry tree to produce leaves of several different shapes, or differing considerably in outline. M. alba L. Rhe White Mulberry is the Asian species that the silk worm grows on Black Mulberry M nigra L. the European species.

The bark is dark brown with a reddish tinge. It is scaly, with the tips of the scales curling and peeling off. The dark brown wood is light and soft and, although it is not strong, it is quite durable.

Mulberry trees are either dioecious or monoecious, and sometimes will change from one sex to another. The flowers are held on short, green, pendulous, nondescript catkins that appear in the axils of the current season's growth and on spurs on older wood. They are wind pollinated and some cultivars will set fruit without any pollination.

The fruit is not a berry but a collective fruit, in appearance like a swollen loganberry. When the flowers are pollinated, they and their fleshy bases begin to swell. Ultimately they become completely altered in texture and color, becoming succulent, fat and full of juice. In appearance, each tiny swollen flower roughly resembles the individual drupe of a blackberry.

The berry is a favorite food for gray squirrels, wild turkeys and many songbirds and is widely used in pies and jellies with it's refreshing, subacid, saccharine taste,

Horace's Satires (SAt ii) tells us of feast with mulberries. and that they should be gathered before sunset.Ovid, tells the tale in the Metamorphoses of the legend of Pyramus and Thisbe, who were slain beneath its shade, the fruit being fabled to have thereby changed from white to deep red through absorbing their blood.

Virgil called the tree sanguinea morus and Pliny reported it's medicinal uses in Egypt and Cyprus. He also told the now well lnown habit .. 'Of all the cultivated trees, the Mulberry is the last that buds, which it never does until the cold weather is past, and it is therefore called the wisest of trees. But when it begins to put forth buds, it dispatches the business in one night, and that with so much force, that their breaking forth may be evidently heard.'

It has been suggested that the generic name of the Mulberry, Morus, has been derived from the Latin word mora (delay), from this tardy expansion of the buds, and as the wisest of its fellows, the tree was dedicated by the Ancients to Minerva.

Mulberry leaves are also to be found in a mosaic from the 'House of the Faun.' Schouw, who wrote about the plants of Pompeii in 1854, considered that M. alba was unknown to the Pompeians. When Virgil died in 19 B.C. silk was held to be a product of the Mulberry leaves, the work of the silkworms not being understood. Silkworm culture was first introduced by Justinian from Constantinople - he ruled from A.D. 527-65. In Italy the Black Mulberry was employed for feeding the silkworm until about 1434, when M. alba was introduced from the Levant and has ever since been commonly preferred.

References in various old Chronicles show that the Mulberry was far more esteemed in ancient times than at present. It was included among the large number of useful plants ordered by Charlemagne (A.D. 812) to be cultivated on the imperial farm. The cultivation of the Mulberry in Spain is implied by a reference to the preparation of Syrup of Mulberries in the Calendar of Cordova of the year 961.

James 1 1608 James I, being anxious to further the silk industry by introducing the culture of the silkworm into Britain, issued an edict encouraging the cultivation of Mulberry trees, but the attempt to rear silkworms in England proved unsuccessful, apparently because the Black Mulberry was cultivated in error.

To eat

Using basic oatmeal plain cookie mixture use mulberries instead of blueberries or use a mixture.

Plenty of recipes for all sorts of sweet dishes etc here at Garden Forum