I appreciate this post! I’ve been thinking about planting a mulberry on my property. I read that it’s leaves as a great daily tonic as a tea. It seems there are a lot of benefits to this beauty
Thanks for this. Why? Because your common-sense reasoning about invasives, coming from somebody who knows what they're talking about is helpful in clarifying my own thoughts (which seem to coincide with yours). A couple of years ago I got a phone app for identifying plants. I was especially interested in wildflowers and I quickly found out that hardly anything in the Bay Area is a native, even the various grasses that cover our beautiful rolling hills. At the same time, I noticed all these anti-invasive warriors hard at work killing everything that isn't a native plant in San Francisco public parks. The park we live closest to is thankfully one that's left unmanicured and with little in the way of Rec and Park landscaping. Because of this there are whole troops of civic-minded do-gooders unconnected with the City who I observe marching around digging up the poor little flowers I enjoy seeing and that the gophers seem to enjoy eating. I've even seen some of these anti-invasive zealots spraying roundup on our hill. I've been tempted to speak to them but not knowing what I'm talking about has so-far made me repress the urge.
Civic-minded do-gooders spraying Roundup. Sounds like a nightmare. Sometimes there really are good reasons to remove invasives, but zealotry often outpaces knowledge and common sense.
I exaggerated a little I think. The roundup sprayers were probably City workers and I only saw them once. Still there really are highly motivated kill-the-foreign-plants groups. I have to be glad they don't have the same opinion about non-indigenous humans.
Love this write up on Mulberry! They are such generous trees, and I agree that they are misclassified as invasive!
One cool thing you can do is graft the males, so that they make fruit. I have tried to encourage Native plant enthusiasts to graft over white mulberry to the native red mulberry, so they can produce the native mulberries and allow the birds to spread their seed.
For the most part folks ignore this option, and would rather just kill them. I love native plant enthusiasts, but sometimes it seems like they feel like removal is the only good option.
I think with anything classified as invasive people automatically think removal is best, and sometimes it is best. My situation is such that attempting to remove all invasives is simply impractical. This has lead to a type of triage, where I only remove the absolute worst. At this point I'm focusing on wintercreeper. It causes more damage by far than any other plant on the property.
I appreciate this post! I’ve been thinking about planting a mulberry on my property. I read that it’s leaves as a great daily tonic as a tea. It seems there are a lot of benefits to this beauty
Thank you! I didn't know about using the leaves for tea. I'm sure there are lots of other uses I'm not even aware of.
Thanks for this. Why? Because your common-sense reasoning about invasives, coming from somebody who knows what they're talking about is helpful in clarifying my own thoughts (which seem to coincide with yours). A couple of years ago I got a phone app for identifying plants. I was especially interested in wildflowers and I quickly found out that hardly anything in the Bay Area is a native, even the various grasses that cover our beautiful rolling hills. At the same time, I noticed all these anti-invasive warriors hard at work killing everything that isn't a native plant in San Francisco public parks. The park we live closest to is thankfully one that's left unmanicured and with little in the way of Rec and Park landscaping. Because of this there are whole troops of civic-minded do-gooders unconnected with the City who I observe marching around digging up the poor little flowers I enjoy seeing and that the gophers seem to enjoy eating. I've even seen some of these anti-invasive zealots spraying roundup on our hill. I've been tempted to speak to them but not knowing what I'm talking about has so-far made me repress the urge.
Civic-minded do-gooders spraying Roundup. Sounds like a nightmare. Sometimes there really are good reasons to remove invasives, but zealotry often outpaces knowledge and common sense.
I exaggerated a little I think. The roundup sprayers were probably City workers and I only saw them once. Still there really are highly motivated kill-the-foreign-plants groups. I have to be glad they don't have the same opinion about non-indigenous humans.
Love this write up on Mulberry! They are such generous trees, and I agree that they are misclassified as invasive!
One cool thing you can do is graft the males, so that they make fruit. I have tried to encourage Native plant enthusiasts to graft over white mulberry to the native red mulberry, so they can produce the native mulberries and allow the birds to spread their seed.
For the most part folks ignore this option, and would rather just kill them. I love native plant enthusiasts, but sometimes it seems like they feel like removal is the only good option.
I think with anything classified as invasive people automatically think removal is best, and sometimes it is best. My situation is such that attempting to remove all invasives is simply impractical. This has lead to a type of triage, where I only remove the absolute worst. At this point I'm focusing on wintercreeper. It causes more damage by far than any other plant on the property.