{"id":2124,"date":"2016-12-18T04:00:07","date_gmt":"2016-12-18T09:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.woodturningpens.com\/?p=2124"},"modified":"2016-10-28T12:43:24","modified_gmt":"2016-10-28T16:43:24","slug":"2124-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.woodturningpens.com\/2124-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Mulberry"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
When talking about Mulberry wood, we enter a zone of potential confusion. Most all trees known by the common name of “Mulberry” belong to the genus Morus<\/em>, although there are some notable exceptions such as the “Paper Mulberry.” Paper Mulberry is properly known as Broussonetia papyrifera<\/em>, closely related to Morus<\/em>, but alas, not identical. Within the Morus<\/em> genus there are some 10–16 species of deciduous trees, most of which are native to eastern Asia, although there is one native to Iran, one native to Africa, and three native to the Americas, but only two which are native to North America.<\/p>\n Of the two native to North America, the first is Morus celtidifolia<\/em>, also known as the Texas mulberry. As the name implies, it is native to parts of western Texas, as well as New Mexico, Arizona, Mexico, and Central and South America as far south as Argentina.<\/p>\n The native Morus<\/em> which is of primary interest to us because it is the one with the widest range and the one most likely to be encountered by the hobbyist wood turner, is Morus rubra<\/em>, or the Red Mulberry. The tree is so named because of the color of the fruit which it bears, although fruitless cultivars are widely cultivated as landscape plants. M. rubra<\/em> is native a very large swath of North America ranging from Massachusetts and southern Vermont west through the southern half of New York to extreme southern Ontario, southern Michigan, central Wisconsin and southeastern Minnesota; south to Iowa, southeastern Nebraska, central Kansas, western Oklahoma and central Texas; and east to southern Florida. It is also found in Bermuda. M. rubra<\/em> reaches its greatest size in the Ohio River Valley.<\/p>\n