The correspondent in the “Chinese Mulberry” column asks if others had experienced what he had, a problem that would be a crucial concern of America’s ultimately unsuccessful mulberry tree growers. Could mulberry trees, the only food silkworms ate, survive in the Northeastern United States? The response is confident: the traditional varieties could not, but a newly imported species, morus multicaulis, would survive, and compared to the ordinary mulberry it was remarkably robust. However, in the early 1840s a series of unusually cold winters overwhelmed the thousands of trees speculators had planted in America. In the years following, what few survivors remained were finished off by a blight. Another question posed was how to manage the sensitive silkworms, a topic addressed in “Persian Management.” In other publications various methods were examined to handle the challenge of keeping silkworms free from disease, fed, and willing to spin their cocoons. Due to a number of problems though, these goals were difficult to achieve. The worms died, either from diseases due to congested conditions, poor quality food, inability of the grower to maintain an even temperature, or a combination of these factors.
Fessenden, Thomas Green. Chinese Mulberry. George C. Barrett, 1834. Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, American Centuries. https://americancenturies.org/collection/l02-063/. Accessed on October 16, 2024.
Please note: Citations are generated automatically from bibliographic data as a convenience, and may not be complete or accurate.