Is there something perverse in continuing efforts with trees meant to be fruiting, which, in one case give only a miserable return, and in the other nothing at all. Year after year. The first case is the mulberry, the black in particular. On your Mediterranean holidays you'll have come across the black splashes its fruit makes when it falls on the ground. One hotelier had to cut down a much-admired mulberry in a pleasant part of his garden, where visitors liked to sunbathe, because, when they stood on the squashed fruit, the stains were carried back to their rooms. Pity. They tasted so good.
Here, in Meath, in a good year some tiny things, like miniature raspberries appear, and you carefully lay down a sheet or newspapers so as not to miss a single one of the miserable crop. Better than nothing, you may say. Then you read in Mrs Beeton that they apparently do well in England and she tells us they are "esteemed for their highly aromatic flavour and their sub-acid nature," and "are considered as cooling, laxative and generally wholesome."
It is not a particularly handsome tree, and the books tell us it may grow to ten metres and more. Its bark tends to look scruffy - as if some lichen were growing on it. When it does reach antiquity, it often has to have its major branches propped up. There is one known notable mulberry in the grounds of Breaffy House Hotel, Castlebar. It fell a few decades ago, but goes on growing. As branches put down roots and flourish, it becomes more like a maze. Kathleen Courell, of the hotel, said over the phone, that it was leafing up now. In County Meath, two trees of some twenty years, barely show signs of green. It's always the last tree to move, never mind the oak and the ash. The hotel knows the importance of the tree - the bar is called The Mulberry Bar.
By the way, the trees mentioned in the first lines above, which give nothing in the way of fruit are, of course, cydonia oblonga, the real quince. Lovely blossom. Incipient fruit comes annually. Frost comes annually. Down fall the fruitlets.