mulberries

[asakiyume]

The two berries I used to pick and eat as a kid were mulberries and black raspberries (a different fruit from blackberries--we had no blackberries where I grew up but plenty of black raspberries). Black raspberries grow on prickly canes, and you can find them in abandoned lots and beside railroad tracks. I was a pro at finding places to pick them.

Mulberries grow on trees. When I was a kid, there was a copse of three or so sapling-sized mulberry trees on my street, at the edge of someone's property, and we used to walk by them and pick the berries off. Not as flavorful as black raspberries, but pleasantly sweet.

Now all but one of those mulberry trees is gone, but that one tree! It's huge. The berries are waaaay up high, out of reach, but I saw a mourning dove enjoying them. And they fall from those high, high branches down to the street.

grand mulberry tree



mulberries



These berries, though, come from a different tree, across the way. You can see below that the berries on this tree are more in reach ;-) (I don't recall this tree from when I was a kid--I think we just preferred being on the other side of the street for our collecting.)

the tree across the way

Comments

[athenais]

I've never eaten a mulberry. They're not at all common here. I don't think the coastal region is good for them, although I'm sure someone, somewhere has grown them in their garden in the warmer parts.

[asakiyume]

That's interesting: I would have thought they'd grow okay in your area--I mean, in the Northeast the winters are colder! But plants are picky: they may want something else they can't get in the SF area (... which is where you are?) Or it could be your area has too much of something they don't like. Who knows!

[athenais]

I'm a ten minute drive from the coast and ten miles south of San Francisco. It's very cool and foggy here in the summers. I suspect they need more seasonal temperature fluctuation than we get.