There’s a huge mulberry tree that reaches over our driveway. Birds sit in it and poop on our windshields. Smaller trees grow in its shade, leaning further out to get sunlight. Every fall the tree waits until a day late in the season, then drops all its leaves at once, a carpet of wide round yellow leaves with small pointed ends. I reach up and trim any branches I can reach; the tree itself is beyond our neighbor’s fence. When snow covers it, low branches brush the top of our van and make us duck under them.

What it does not do, is drop fruit. I didn’t realize it was a mulberry tree until we had lived here several years. The big tree is male; it fertilizes female mulberry trees. There must be successful female trees somewhere, because lots of baby mulberry trees start in our yard. A small stunted mulberry tree grows out of our house foundation; I cut its branches mercilessly so we can walk around the house. Another stunted mulberry grows in the hollow of the huge oak tree by the street.

Two mulberry trees grew large. One came up next to a pile of fallen branches. It doesn’t get mowed, so anything can grow there: vines, milkweed, fungus. Several other trees sprang up there as well, and an adventurous grape vine used the mulberry tree to reach our power line.

The other mulberry tree grew on the opposite side of the yard, in my black raspberry patch. I allowed it. The black raspberries don’t mind; they keep growing new canes, flowering and fruiting.

Both of the newer mulberry trees produced fruit, a lot of fruit. Mulberries are small purple-black berries that hold onto the tree only until the moment they’re ripe; then they let go. They grow in ones and twos and threes, between the leaves. They’re fragile and they stain everything. They taste good, but not fabulous. The berries do not survive long, even refrigerated. They are not a commercial crop in the U.S.

The trees grow everywhere on a whim and therefore are considered a trash tree. The baby trees are incredibly persistent and will not go away even with repeated cutting. Mature mulberry trees can grow very tall, but are rarely allowed to reach that stage in town.

Having said that, I like having mulberry trees. The one growing near our power line had to be removed when the grape vine used it to climb the wire. The power company removed the other small mulberry tree, for fear it would also reach the power lines. Joke’s on them, though: another mulberry tree sprang up among the raspberry canes before they finished sawing. We just harvested two pints of berries from it. Yum!