Wands on the Street: Maybe a Mulberry?

Two streets over, East-wise, there's a few trees I've never been able to identify. Their main trunk hunches over at about five feet and sprouts thinner branches straight up like fingers. Its leaves are thick-veined and shaped like hearts.

One of these trees had been pruned back last week. Its thick branches stacked along the easement for brush collection. I've been walking past these trees for nearly 20 years and this was first time I'd seen the interior of its wood. The sapwood, the layer directly beneath the outer bark, was light yellow and its heartwood at the center was a deep brown. Most trees used for urban landscaping have a light sapwood and heartwood, like oak and ash and pecan and definitely sycamore and cottonwood. So, I dragged one of the cut branches home. It was only three feet long but heavy, so heavy.

The inch and a half diameter of heartwood will make a beautiful wand, or series of wands, but I'll let it dry for at least a month before carving into the wood. I hope the heartwood doesn't lighten.

I also snagged a nearby leaf, because I needed to finally figure out what type of tree it was. Fall is here so the leaves aren't at their most fresh. Half of them have fallen to the ground.

After a bit of searching on the interwebs, I think I narrowed the tree's type down to a mulberry, probably a male mulberry tree, because I've never once seen them with berries. Or I wasn't paying attention. I could still be wrong.

Here's some things I learned on the interwebs about the mulberry tree:

• associated with healing, from root to berries supposedly used for medicines
  
• associated with the beginning of time, with the energies of the yin and the yang before there was a split
  
• rare for an domestic hardwood
  
• not included in this poem about Nine Blessed Trees
  
• There are nine blessed trees.

There might be more informed sources in book form.