A few, after being on deposit in the river banks for a century or more, accrued values of hundreds of dollars. Most, however, were collectable for their distinctive shapes or colors, for the legends embossed in the glass, and for the simple fact that they were made individually by hand. An occasional discovery was a ceramic soy sauce or saki jug with oriental markings. Hundreds of mulberry trees were cursed and uprooted to get to the bottle strata, which lay as much as ten feet beneath the surface. In 1975 I became a full-time teacher of handpress printing and spare time for bottle-digging evaporated. During my inevitable progression into papermaking in the years that followed, my readings and conversations caused first a suspicion and then a conviction that the ugly junkyard tree that I had maligned and abused for so long was the same beautiful and undemanding tree that had provided fiber for centuries for the mysteriously exquisite sheets of oriental paper such as those which occasionally passed through my hands.[sp^02es] Timothy Barrett's articles, his magnificent book, and his patient answers to my numerous written and telephoned questions, as well as his willingness to process a quantity of the Alabama bark into large, flawless sheets that had the "true Oriental look,"[sp^03es] were the final determining factors in establishing the tree's identity. Both Barrett and another internationally known papermaker, Richard Flavin, who lives in Japan, have conducted workshops at the University of Alabama in which they made paper from the local bark in the traditional Japanese manner. Although they admit that it is an exciting and promising prospect, both recognize that more work must be done before the bark can find its ranking with that of Japan. Deeply steeped in tradition, neither Barrett nor Flavin indicated a recognition that the discovery of an exotic but apparently bounteous raw material will provide opportunity for innovation in sheet formation---a meld, perhaps, of Western and Eastern techniques or, far more exciting to contemplate, a new technique barely harkening to either. My own observations cause me to concede that the tree, generally identified as Broussonetia papyrifera Vent. or "paper mulberry," although apparently well established, is not native to North America. Further observations, and intuitions, now cause a suspicion that it also may not be native to Japan, generally believed to be the tree's place of origin, but that seeds somehow hitched a ride to both locations from a remote tropical birthplace. Little more than a [bf01>16ef]" in length, through a magnifying glass the tiny, hard-shelled seed looks like a miniature cherry pit. Female trees only a few years old can produce dozens of colorful fruit; large, older trees, thousands. Each fruit may have more than a hundred seeds. The seeds will sink in water but the fruit covers the seeds with a mucilaginous gel that causes many to stick to whatever solid surface they may fall upon. I envision seeds stuck to drifting bark, uprooted trees, and, ages later, clipper-ship cargo which would have included burlap or straw-wrapped bales of ceramic soy sauce and saki jugs from Japan. Not considered to be palatable by the only human I know who has tasted it---myself---the fruit nevertheless attracts and is eaten with relish by some insects and birds. The seeds are attacked directly by other kinds of insects and small furry critters. Those seeds that survive often sprout where they eventually fall to earth. In addition to Japan, where the Broussonetia papyrifera is one of several closely related species of paper mulberry that are called kozo, the paper historian Dard Hunter[sp^04es] places the tree in mainland China, Tibet, Mongolia, Korea, and various South Pacific Islands. My own correspondents add Yucatan, Hawaii, Taiwan, and Thailand. A kind of mulberry was being used by the American Indians along the Mississippi River for the weaving of clothing and ropes when Hernando de Soto made his depredatory quest for gold across the southeastern U.S. around 1540. Morus rubra, recognized by botanists as the single mulberry native to North America, might well have been what the Spanish chroniclers saw, but the long, tough sinews of the paper mulberry are better suited for ropes and clothing, and I have seen great old groves of it in Vicksburg, Mississippi. Unsuccessful efforts were made to cultivate imported Broussonetia papyrifera in Northampton, Massachusetts, in 1834 for establishing a papermaking industry.[sp^05es] In the 1950's, ancient and gnarled paper mulberries were standing on the streets of restored Williamsburg, Virginia, leftovers, it was believed, from early attempts to colonize silkworms.[sp^06es] The silkworms obviously preferred their accustomed diet, the lush glossy leaves of most other mulberries, to these, which are harsh, fuzzy, sandpaper-like, and tough. I have seen trees in Georgia, Mississippi, and Tennessee, received leaves from informed travelers in Texas and Pennsylvania, and heard testimonials from credible sources in Florida and North Carolina. Trees ordered from a South Carolina nursery were doing well, Lilian Bell wrote in 1986, in her garden in McMinnville, Oregon. In Alabama, botanists recorded the tree as early as 1880 and by 1972 had found it in 36 of the 67 counties. I have seen it in an additional three and have not yet had an opportunity to make a thorough search of the others. Since I recognized its true identity in 1983, I have made efforts to define the tree's present U.S. range, and, with less than spectacular results, have attempted to extend it as far as possible. Only when the fiber becomes conveniently and abundantly available to many papermakers can we be relatively certain that it will reach the one pair of hands disassociated from tradition, by circumstance or choice, that will devise a technique and procedure to give the paper its own Western distinctive quality and fully resolve Mr. Kubota Yasuichi's prophetic entreatment. There comes to me an indescribable parental or proprietary sense of pride as each new state joins the roster, but no notice will ever match the thrill I got from a short sentence Kathy Clark once added to a Twinrocker Christmas Card. She had asked me at the 1985 Friends of the Dard Hunter Paper Museum meeting to send a few small plants, which she would attempt to grow in her Indiana garden. I carefully dug, bagged, boxed, and shipped thirteen healthy youngsters about eighteen inches in height. I saw the trees myself in October, 1988, and they have thrived, despite having arrived in Brookston on a bitter cold day, which caused all to get planted in a hurriedly-dug, single hole in the icy ground. Below the printed season's greeting the Clarks sent in 1987, Kathy had penned, "Alabama Kozo Lives!" Notes 1. Winifred Lutz, Appendix One, in Timothy Barrett's JapanesePapermaking: Traditions, Tools, and Techniques. (Weatherhill, New York, 1983). 2. The discovery and subsequent development of Alabama Kozo is described in the Friends of the Dard Hunter Paper Museum Newsletter: Vol. 5 No. 1, January 1986; Vol. 5 No. 2, June 1986; and Vol. 6, No.'s 2 & 3, November 1987. 3. Vera G. Freeman, of Andrews/Nelson/Whitehead, New York, in a letter to Glenn House, October 3, 1985. The entire sentence reads: "It is almost incredible that sheets that have the true Oriental look can be produced by trees growing in Alabama." 4. Dard Hunter, Papermaking, The History and Technique of an Ancient Craft, (Dover, New York, 1978). 5. Edmund H. Fulling, "Botanical Aspects of the Paper-Pulp and Tanning Industries in the United States", Fifty Years of Botany,edited by William Campbell Steere, (McGraw-Hill, New York, 1958). 6. Ibid.
