In this country the Black Mulberry does not reach a greater height than about thirty feet, its branches spreading out near the ground and attaining considerable thickness. The leaves are large and rough, heart-shaped, and very plentiful, so that the tree affords good shade. The flowers are small and inconspicuous, of a greenish-white colour, the sexes separate, though sometimes on the same tree. The male or staminate flowers consist of a four-leaved perianth, enclosing four stamens, a large number of the blossoms being combined in a catkinlike spike, depending from the axils of the leaves. The female spike is shorter, and the individual flower consists of a four-parted perianth, enclosing the ovary and its two branched stigma. After fertilization the perianth becomes plump and succulent, and all on the one spike become so pressed together by their great increase in size that they form a _multiple_ fruit, having a slight resemblance to the fruit of the Bramble (the produce of _one_ flower), but really differing from it greatly. Mulberries are ripe in August or September.
The leaves do not unfold from the bud until the cold weather is well over, usually in May. It is said that its Latin name _Morus_ is derived from _mora_, delay, in consequence of this caution on the part of the tree. The leaves generally used in the silk-culture for feeding the “worms” are those of the White Mulberry (_Morus alba_).
=The Small-leaved Elm= (_Ulmus campestris_).
The Elm is one of our commonest trees, yet a great amount of uncertainty appears to prevail in the popular mind in identifying the Common or Small-leaved from our second British species, the variously-named Scotch Elm, Wych Elm, Witch Hazel, or Mountain Elm (_Ulmus montana_). There is something more than a suspicion that _campestris_ is not strictly indigenous, but it settled in the country so many hundreds of years ago (brought hither, some say, by returning Crusaders) that it would appear ungenerous at this date to question its claims to be called British, especially as it is more widely diffused than _montana_. The Elms are both tall trees, but _campestris_ usually attains a slightly greater height than _montana_, though the latter has a much stouter trunk. Their flowers appear before the leaves, and, although they are individually minute and inconspicuous, they are united in bundles, and the colour of the perianth and stamens renders them conspicuous. The perianth is bell-shaped, cleft into five or more lobes, reddish; the purple anthers are equal in number with the divisions of the perianth, to which their filaments are attached. The two styles are awl-shaped, their inner surfaces stigmatic. The flower-cluster is succeeded by a bunch of one-seeded _samaras_, winged all round. In _montana_ the seed is placed in the centre of the samaras; in _campestris_ it is distinctly above the centre. The leaves of _montana_ are as large again as those of _campestris_, broader at the base, more inclined to be unequally heart-shaped. There are, however, many varieties of each, which make the identification of the species often very difficult.