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

[cgbookcat1]

I love black raspberries and planted some in my yard! Birds get most of them but the couple handfuls I get are wonderful.

[asakiyume]

I love them too ^_^

[sartorias]

That is one tall tree!

[conuly]

The mulberries are all done here :(

Do you have any white mulberries where you live, or just the red ones?

[pameladean]

That mulberry is just glorious! P.

[anna_wing]

I've never knowingly had black raspberries! Mulberries and blackberries, yes. That is a beautiful tree.

[cmcmck]

That is an impressive mulberry!

[shewhomust]

I lived in a house with a nulberry tree in the garden, when I was a child. It gave abundant fruit, which my mother used to bottle for the winter (we grew very tired of mulberries, imagine!). My father would sit in the shade of the tree playing chess, and occasionally a mulberry would fall onto the board (and once a cat, but that's another story...).

[smokingboot]

Blackberries are my favourite breakfast fruit. I used to come home from late night shifts, pick some from the wilderness that constituted our garden, and have them on some pre-dawn breakfast cereal.

I never tasted a mulberry or a black raspberry in my life, but they both sound enticing.

[adore]

What a beautiful tree. And the berries look delicious :)

[mallorys_camera]

Is that the mulberry tree you showed me?

It is such a beautiful tree!

[asakiyume]

And if you click through, you can get click to enlarge twice, which gives you the experience of being a squirrel or bird way up among those branches!

[asakiyume]

I have *seen* white mulberries, but I don't remember where I saw the tree. I grew up outside Albany, NY, and now live in western Massachusetts, so one of those two places--but which one! Not sure...

Do you have white mulberries near you?

[asakiyume]

It sure is! Aging for a tree means becoming magnificent ^_^

[asakiyume]

I hope one day you can try some! They are smaller than blackberries. They have their own unique flavor--not like a red raspberry (or a golden one) and not like a blackberry.

Where I live now, there are both blackberries and black raspberries. The black raspberries begin to ripen about now in a typical year, and the blackberries come ripe in August. When we moved here was my first time to experience wild blackberries!

[asakiyume]

It's fun to see how tall a tree can actually get! It's a far cry from "all around the mulberry bush"!

[asakiyume]

Ahahaha, that's a great story, both about the mulberries dropping on the board (like the tree giving hints about moves) and even better about the cat!

(But yes, I can imagine getting tired of it--anything over and over again can be Too Much.)

[asakiyume]

Blackberries are wonderful! I think I first had them in, actually, England! And I can remember picking them along the coastline in Dorset (which is where we lived at the time).

I'm lucky that where I live now, there are both wild blackberries *and* wild black raspberries--though the place I used to go to pick blackberries has gotten too wild (which is to say, too full of poison ivy) for me to venture it.

Here's hoping one day you get to try both mulberries and black raspberries!

[asakiyume]

They don't have a very strong flavor--they're just kind of mild and sweet--but mild and sweet is sometimes just the ticket!

[asakiyume]

I think it must be! I was so taken by how big it had gotten!

[conuly]

Oh yes! They're a bit sweeter, but also mushier.

[asakiyume]

Excellent! I'll keep my eye out...

[osprey_archer]

I pick mulberries sometimes! As you say, not as flavorful as raspberries, but it does make me feel like a forager.

Last year one of my friends pointed out a series of serviceberry trees to me, and now when they're ripe I like to eat a few just because I know I can.

[asakiyume]

Yes! Sometimes a foraged food isn't much to write home about--except for the fact that you can just reach out and eat it, which is like a bonus twenty points added to an unremarkable essay. Suddenly it's earned a grade of 95%

[osprey_archer]

Exactly!