The Subversive Mulberry
The other day I was walking from my car into my office building when I noticed a small tree sprouting from the crevice between the parking garage and a chain-link fence. I recognized the distinctive yellow-orange trunk immediately. Years ago, right after college, I spent some time working for a residential tree care service and my boss had drilled the identification into me. It was the infernal mulberry.
My boss had explained that a mulberry was more weed than tree. It seemed to grow just about anywhere — right beside houses, in gardens, along driveways, in fence rows. Give it a thimble-full of dirt and a bit of sunlight and it would take hold.
And it grew fast. If you missed it when it was a sapling, the next time you came back it could be a tree with a trunk that was a couple inches in diameter, and much harder to remove.
If you were unlucky enough to have a mulberry on your property that lived to maturity? Get ready for a mess. Its berries would fall everywhere, staining things, attracting animals, and spreading new mulberries. That’s why these “trash” trees were to be killed on sight — hacked down, torn up, whatever it took.
This was the company line, and it was reinforced at every opportunity.
Later, when I acquired a yard of my own, I came to understand the truth behind this policy. Or partial…
