THE MULBERRIES.
The mulberry family includes fifty-five genera and nearly a thousand species of temperate-zone and tropical plants. The genus ficus alone includes six hundred species. Hemp, important for its fibrous, inner bark, and the hop vine are well known herbaceous members of the mulberry family, which stands botanically between the elms and the nettles—strange company, it would seem, but justified by fundamental characteristics. Three genera of this family
have tree forms in America—the mulberry, the Osage orange, and the fig. Two native mulberries and three exotic species are widely cultivated for their fruit, their wood, and as ornamental trees. Weeping mulberries are among the most popular horticultural forms.