Wednesday, June 13, 2012

Unidentified flora

Botany time! What is this tree?
It's growing near our garage. It's been there for a few years; this is the first that it's had fruit. It has smooth bark, no thorns or anything like that, and the trunk is still relatively small in diameter. The canopy is pretty big already though. Aaron thinks it's a mulberry tree... is that right? What do you think? (looking especially hard at you, Gramma Jo!)

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

The fruit look like mullberries or blackberries, but I think blackberry bushes have thorns. So I vote mullberries.

Evan said...

Definitely not blackberries. They're not a tree, and they have tons of thorns. They're a weed in western Washington, I spent a significant chunk of my childhood chopping them down in my parents' backyard.

Looks like mulberries are white like that when they're unripe: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Unripe_white_mulberry.jpg

Anonymous said...

Looks like mulberry to me. My mom raised silkworms and they only eat mulberry leaves. She'd stop at any house that had a mulberry tree to ask if she could cut some leaves. Good times.

Anonymous said...

It's mulberry. When the kids were small they had mulberry faces all summer from eating the from off the volunteer plants that came up all over the farm. Birds are really good about propagating them. They make great jam.

Grandma Jo

Leah said...

Thanks all for the confirmation, and thanks Ann for the interesting info! The girls get freaked out by bugs, so I don't think we'll be raising any silkworms. :) But I will make jam!!

bethanyg said...

Indeed, mulberry. So you can play "Here we go round the mulberry bush..."