Red MulberryRED [STUBBS]

The native mulberry of North America, Morus rubra, the Red Mulberry grew throughout the eastern and midwestern regions from the Gulf Coast to the Great Lakes.  Rarely growing more than 70 feet tall, this modest sized tree proved a valuable source of food for American birds.  Native peoples ate the fruit, dried, boiled, and raw.  English colonists, imitating Natives, consumed the red mulberry's fruit, but preferred the less sweet and deeper flavored English black mulberry which they brought with them.  It was found in the early 18th century that silk worms did not savor the leaves of American mulberries, nor much favor the English black.  So two white varieties, the multicaulis and the Chinese-Italian white; the former had multiple stems, the latter, a solitary stem.  In the 19th century, crosses between the red and the multicaulis and the red and the English black gave rise to the everbearing class of mulberries.  

The fruit of the red mulberry could be purple-black, reddish, or white.  It dropped for two months. Because of the disease resistence and hardiness, plant hunters began looking for extraordinarily prolific and large-fruited trees in the decade after the Civil War.  One tree discovered in Laurens County, Georgia, in the 1870s was promoted by pomologist P. J. Berkmanns, who established it as the one successful commercial strain of red mulberry sold in the United States.  Named Stubbs after its discoverer, it was described thusly, "Fruit very large--from 1 1/2 to 2 inches long; black, vinous and of excellent quality; greatly superior to any of the cultivated varieties.  It is a wonderfully prolific bearer; fruit lasts nearly two months" [A. F. Mosby, Richmond Commercial Nurseries 1897, Richmond VA, 34] Claims of its superiority  were hyperbolic. The Hicks dropped fruit for four months.  The flavor did not rival, for humans, that of the black.  

Besides Berkmanns's Fruitlands, other professional nurseries that sold the Stubbs version of the red mulberry included Blue Ribbon Nursery in Louisville, Clingman Nursery in Kiethville LA, C. W. Eichling in New Orleans, Glen St. Mary's Nursery in Glen St. Mary's FL, Richmond Commercial Nursery.

David S. Shields