A Mess of Mulberries
In the last couple of weeks before I enter my home, I must take off my shoes to avoid pressing purple spots into the rugs and floor. My car floormat is stained with purple. My windshield has white-purple blotches appearing like a watercolorist tried to mix a new paint color.
It’s mulberry season. Mulberries are part of are Ozarks landscape, love ‘em or hate ‘em. Few people, it seems have the patience or time to pick the fruits for the reward of a mulberry pie. Granted under the weed definition of “an unwanted plant out of place,” one could consider the native red mulberry Morus rubra a weed tree in an anthropocentric view of the world. Though the mulberry itself, may look at you, if you’re a descendant of European immigrants, as a species out of place, too.
There are 16 species of mulberries (Morus) in the mulberry family (Moraceae) found in temperate regions and tropical mountains. Our native Eastern North American, red mulberry (Morus rubra) is not what we commonly see along our streets. It is usually hidden deep within rich forests.
Instead, we see the widespread alien Asiatic white mulberry Morus alba, commonly naturalized in North America, Europe, and elsewhere. The leaf blade of the white mulberry is mostly smooth and shiny above, whereas the leaves of the native red mulberry are slightly rough to the touch above, and somewhat hairy beneath. A good deal of head scratching is necessary to distinguish between the two.
White mulberry leaves are famously the food of silk worms. Starting as early as the 1650s, the English created white mulberry plantations in Virginia in an attempt to start a silkworm industry in America. Samuel Pullein’s 1755 work The Culture of Silk or, an Essay on its Rational Practice and Improvement… for the use of the American Colonies, is just one among many books on the subject.
Maybe songbirds know something we don’t about the nutritional value of mulberries, at least the abundant evidence they leave behind during the mulberry season would suggest that. Like blackberries, mulberry fruits are an aggregate of many smaller fruits called drupes. The compounds that give the fruits their dark purple color are called anthocyanins which are associated with healthful antioxidant activity.
Maybe the birds know something we don’t.