The White Mulberry
M. alba, Linn.
The white mulberry is a native of northern China and Japan. From this region it has been extensively introduced into all warm temperate climates. Its white berries are of negligible character. It is the leaves that give this oriental mulberry a unique position in the economic world. They are the chosen food of silkworms. No substitute has ever robbed this tree of its preëminence, maintained for many centuries in its one field of usefulness.
The hardy Russian mulberries are derived from M. alba. These have done much to enrich the horticulture of our Northern states, but the parent tree, though it thrives in the eastern United States and in the South, has not been the means of establishing silk culture on a paying basis in this country.
The Black Mulberry
M. nigra, Linn.
The black mulberry, probably a native of Persia, has large, dark red, juicy fruits, for which it is extensively cultivated in Europe. In this country it is hardy only in the Southern and the Pacific Coast states. It is the best fruit tree of its family, yet no mulberry is able to take rank among profitable fruit trees. The fruits are too sweet and soft, and they lack piquancy of flavor. They ripen a few at a time and are gathered by shaking the trees.
The dark green foliage of the black mulberry gives ample shade throughout the season. Planted in the garden or in the border of the lawn where no walk will be defaced by the dropping fruits, the mulberry is a particularly desirable tree because it attracts some of our most desirable song-birds to build on the premises. Given a mulberry tree and a bird-bath near by, and the smallest city lot becomes a bird sanctuary through the summer and a wayside inn for transients during the two migratory seasons.
THE FIGS
The genus ficus belongs to all tropical countries, and this remarkable range accounts for the six hundred different species botanists have identified. The rubber plant, popular in this country as a pot and tub plant, is one of the best-known species. In its East Indian forest home it is the "Assam Rubber Tree." It may begin life as an air plant, fixing its roots in the crotch of another tree, in which a chance seed has lodged. A shock of aërial roots strikes downward and reaches the ground. After this the tree depends upon food drawn from the earth. The supporting host tree is no longer needed. The young rubber tree has by this time a trunk stiff enough to stand alone.