Mulberry trees were well admitted in the ancient civilizations of the world. They were famous fruit trees, in that of the savory berry fruits that were incredibly produced by fast growing trees - loaded with huge green leaves that were eaten by livestock, along with the berries, and the leaves were used in the Orient to fatten silkworms for the silk trade. General Oglethorpe, in 1733, imported 500 white mulberry trees to Embankment Frederica in Georgia to revitalize silk production at the English satellite of Georgia.
William Bartram, the famous early American colonist and ecologist, described his encounter with mulberry trees near Ambulatory, Alabama, in his book, Trip, in the year 1773.
Rajah ' s Nursery in 1774 offered for sale 500 gray mulberry trees, Morus alba ' and 1000 black mulberry trees, Morus nigra, ' at Flushing, New York. Documents display that America ' s first President, George Washington, bought fruit from this nursery.
Mulberry trees were planted in the landscape of President Thomas Jefferson 20 feet apart, and the fruit trees lined both sides of the road that extended around the house at Monticello, Virginia.
The silk trade was extremely important in the ancient civilizations in exchanges of fabrics, rugs, etc. The caravans of camels that traveled the " Silk Road " from Turkey to China brought world civilizations in contact with many valuable products back and forth to be traded, one of the most desirable and important products was silk. The mulberry trees, Morus alba, ' were most desirable for silk production and gradually were filtered from Oriental societies to European fields. Many of these mulberry trees are grown today in Turkey, from where the famous Turkish silk carpets are distributed throughout the world.
Early Americans such as General Oglethorpe hoped to establish the silk industry in the American debtor colonies, but the project was destined for failure for many reasons. The mulberry trees are very fast growing fruit trees, and many farmers in the United States and other countries are hoping to profitably grow the trees for the production of human and livestock food. The wood of mulberry trees is very soft and is used for many purposes in many nations, but not extensively in the United States.
The white mulberry, Morus alba, ' with the extremely large crop production of these trees has been observed growing as a fruit tree in North Carolina according to researcher, Russell Smith, in Tree Crops: A Permanent Agriculture that: white mulberry trees planted by a farmer " who kept pigs and claimed that one - third their weight was due to the mulberries falling from the trees - about 625 pounds of pork to an acre on rather thin, sandy land with little care and no cultivation. " James A. Duke in Handbook of Energy Crops sees the mulberry fruit as a source of energy, " in South Korea on producing high yields of ethanol from mulberry trees. "
Mulberry trees are considered to be a very important fruit tree in gardens of the Orient, Europe and the Mideast, and since new hybrid cultivars have been developed recently, the demand for these trees has surged in the U. S., where the grafted trees are rare, expensive and difficult to obtain. New cultivars are adaptable throughout the U. S. except Southern Florida, California and Arizona, and some trees offer stainless fruit, early bearing, rapid growth and delicious berry quality on berries that dangle from the stems, some tasting sweet as honey. These syrupy sweet mulberries are used in Ice Cream, jams, jellies, beverages, pies, and as stuffing mixtures for game birds.
