Mulberry Trees: Standing The Test Of Time

On the front lawn of the Rogers Mansion, there grows a white mulberry tree — its branches arching over the grass and the sidewalk on the south side of the Southampton History Museum complex.

But in the late 19th century — when this tree was most likely planted — this was not the mulberry of choice. At this time, almost all farms had fruit trees, in general, as well as the native red mulberry, Morus rubra, in particular.

Southampton-based landscape designer Fay Henderson remembers picking mulberries as a child with her whole family — her grandmother, mother, and brothers and sisters. They piled into their station wagon and drove to a nearby farm starting in strawberry season, followed by peach, tomato and, finally, mulberry — which they all tried not to eat while harvesting.

“My grandmother canned everything,” Henderson recalled, adding, “Berries are ephemeral and delicate, easy to crush. What my family picked had to be processed right away into jam and preserves. My grandmother made fresh bread while that was being done. The fragrance in the kitchen was heavenly. It was just heaven.”

It was a family tradition, she said, and they always had an abundance of produce. They lived in a small house, which had been part of a larger farm, that came with an orchard full of apples, peaches, cherries and, her favorite, prune plums.

“As a kid, I did not realize what a luxury that really was to go outside, stand under a tree and find delicious fruit,” she said.

The hedgerow was full of elderberries, mulberries and blackberries, Henderson recalled, and she and her neighbor would stand right outside their front doors, eating the berries together. “Store-bought fruit did not taste as good as what I took off of the trees,” she said, “and I did not realize how great that was until I moved away.”

While living in Columbus, Ohio, during college, Henderson noticed a huge mulberry tree growing outside her apartment, where she could pick the berries from her fire escape. And her familiarity with the tree and its fruit led her to recognize another while working on the East End. It was a big, old red mulberry — pruned to secure the branches, as it was quite large, she recalled.

Eventually, the owners came to love it, she said.

“The grandkids could stand under it and grab berries off of the branches,” she said. “Now, it is a grand memory for those children.”

Although other large red mulberry specimens still exist elsewhere in Southampton Village, most people immediately cut down the native tree because they consider it to be messy, as proven by my husband and his brother, who would spread sheets under two large mulberry trees in their backyard when they were kids. They made jam from the fruit they harvested, but his father later cut them down after the boys repeatedly neglected to take off their shoes when they came inside. While the red mulberry is very tolerant of pollution and makes a great street tree, the purple berry temporarily stains even sidewalks.

The mulberry that Henderson came across did not require a lot of care, she said. Growing in the middle of the lawn, like the one at Rogers Mansion, the dropped berries did not offend anyone. Birds would flock to the tree to feast on the berries and, on old farms, the chickens, geese and ducks would come along to pick up what dropped — or the pigs could be placed under the tree to feed on the summer bounty.

Native Americans picked the Morus rubra berries and evaporated them in special baskets over fires, or mashed them up and put them on basswood leaves to dry. The berries could then be stored or added to corn cakes. All parts of the native red mulberry tree were considered medicinal, and even the inner bark could be stripped into a fiber for weaving.

This wonderful abundantly fruiting native tree can be found growing close to the beach, as it tolerates sandy acidic soil and droughty conditions. Large specimens grow along the dirt road out to the lighthouse in Orient Point, which is a tough location with salt spray and strong winds.

While the flowers are insignificant, wildlife loves the fruit. Planting one or two would attract orioles, thrushes, cardinals and finches into your yard. Even if you’re not interested in making jam or pies, this is an important native plant that local silk moths like to eat in their caterpillar stage — including the gorgeous, giant, fuzzy Hyalophora cecropia moth and the Luna moth.

Morus rubra is a popular tree for revegetation, reforestation and biodiversity projects, but it can be hard to find. Typically, it is sold as a 2-year-old sapling that could be male or female, and either pollarded or coppiced to allow for easier access to the fruit — which look like a smaller blackberry, but have a sweet, delicious flavor of their own.

A few years ago, Dale Haubrich had the great fortune to find a 2-foot-tall mulberry seedling growing on the edge of his plot at EECO farm in East Hampton. He recognized the leaf shape, which brought back fond memories of mulberry trees on his own family’s farm that grew in a cultivated setting along the river’s edge.

“My mother would lay a sheet under the tree,” he recalled. “There were way too many of the purple berries. My brothers and I would climb up into the branches and shake the tree.”

Once an abundant amount of the mulberries fell onto the sheet, they would eat them sprinkled with sugar, or make the berries into juice. He only recalls one pie.

And so, he dug up the little seedling at EECO Farm and transplanted it to his home in Sag Harbor. He marvels at how quickly the little seedling took off, now standing 8 feet tall and producing fruit — though in need of some pruning.

Haubrich considers the mulberry to be a hardy tree that can withstand temperature and weather extremes. He remembers a tornado ripping through his childhood tree’s big limbs one year. His family cut up what fell and used the yellow interior heartwood as fence posts. In my own hometown of Guilford, Connecticut, the Mulberry Point area still exists, which was an old farm in the 1700s developed by Jared Eliot. There, he introduced mulberry trees to provide food for silkworms as the production of silk took off — a winter occupation that he visualized for local families. Some of those trees still exist, centuries later.

The mulberry in front of Rogers Mansion may be a centenarian, too, and it has more value beyond feeding the birds in summer and casting shade on the south side of the Southampton History Museum.

It, of course, has history, too.

Tom Edmonds, the executive director of the Southampton History Museum, wonders if the mulberry on the front lawn was planted at the same time that Samuel Parrish, who bought the Rogers Mansion in 1899, began developing the nearby Parrish Art Museum grounds — which is now the Southampton Arts Center — with assistance from landscape designer Warren Manning.

The period planting list included both white and red mulberry trees in the northwest grove of the Southampton Arts Center property, and some of the original mulberry trees there have survived over a century. So, if they were planted at the same time as the tree at Rogers Mansion, that would make it over 100 years old.

If only trees could talk.

Last month, several arborists evaluated the mulberry — including Bartlett Tree Experts, Ray Smith & Associates, Marders, and the village arborist — who found some rot and recommending pruning, cleaning out the dead wood and cabling. The Southampton History Museum’s Board of Trustees unanimously voted to save the tree and the Southampton Village Board agreed, so a plan for the mulberry’s preservation will be made.

Large old trees have a genetic makeup that needs to be preserved, according to the Morton Arboretum in Illinois, and only 1 percent of most tree species live to become ancient trees. Delight in berry picking, providing food for the birds, fodder for endangered silk moths, prominence as a native reforestation species and historical gravitas all favored well in establishing why the Rogers Mansion mulberry should be pruned, protected and preserved.

But there is more at stake behind the desire to care for this tree — seen as a weed in some places, or during some eras — that, here, is considered a prominent specimen. It has survived the test of time and may be a legacy for future generations to look back on, to enjoy, and to revere.