Mulberry Traditional Cache

Mulberry; Is it native Red Mulberry, Invasive Asian White Mulberry or a hybrid?

Mulberry

Morus, a genus of flowering plants in the family Moraceae, comprises 10–16 species of deciduous trees commonly known as mulberries, growing wild and under cultivation in many temperate world regions.

Pennsylvania state champion Morus alba at Longwood Gardens.

The closely related genus Broussonetia is also commonly known as mulberry, notably the paper mulberry, Broussonetia papyrifera. Mulberries are fast-growing when young, but soon become slow-growing and rarely exceed 10–15 m (33–49 ft) tall. The leaves are alternately arranged, simple and often lobed and serrated on the margin. Lobes are more common on juvenile shoots than on mature trees.

The trees can be monoecious or dioecious.The mulberry fruit is a multiple fruit, 2–3 cm (0.79–1.18 in) long. Immature fruits are white, green, or pale yellow. In most species the fruits turn pink and then red while ripening, then dark purple or black, and have a sweet flavor when fully ripe. The fruits of the white-fruited cultivar are white when ripe; the fruit of this cultivar is also sweet, but has a very bland flavor compared with darker varieties.

Species

Long mulberry

White mulberry

The taxonomy of Morus is complex and disputed. Over 150 species names have been published, and although differing sources may cite different selections of accepted names, only 10–16 are generally cited as being accepted by the vast majority of botanical authorities. Morus classification is even further complicated by widespread hybridisation, wherein the hybrids are fertile.

Distribution and cultivation

Mulberry fruit in Libya

Black, red, and white mulberry are widespread in southern Europe, the Middle East, northern Africa and Indian subcontinent, where the tree and the fruit have names under regional dialects. Jams and sherbets are often made from the fruit in this region.

These are black mulberry flowers, male above, female below.

Black mulberry was imported to Britain in the 17th century in the hope that it would be useful in the cultivation of silkworms. It was much used in folk medicine, especially in the treatment of ringworm. Mulberries are also widespread in Greece, particularly in the Pelopnnese, which in the Middle Ages was known as Mores, deriving from the Greek word for the tree (mouria).

Black mulberry fruit.

Mulberries can be grown from seed, and this is often advised as seedling-grown trees are generally of better shape and health, but they are most often planted from large cuttings which root readily. The mulberry plants which are allowed to grow tall with a crown height of 5–6 feet from ground level and a stem girth of 4–5 inches or more is called tree mulberry. They are specially raised with the help of well-grown saplings 8–10 months old of any of the varieties recommended for rain-fed areas like S-13 (for red loamy soil) or S-34 (black cotton soil) which are tolerant to drought or soil-moisture stress conditions. Usually, the plantation is raised and in block formation with a spacing of 6 feet × 6 feet, or 8 feet × 8 feet, as plant to plant and row to row distance. The plants are usually pruned once a year during the monsoon season (July – August) to a height of 5–6 feet and allowed to grow with a maximum of 8–10 shoots at the crown. The leaves are harvested three or four times a year by a leaf-picking method under rain-fed or semiarid conditions, depending on the monsoon.

The tree branches pruned during the fall season (after the leaves have fallen) are cut and used to make durable baskets supporting agriculture and animal husbandry.

Some North American cities have banned the planting of mulberries because of the large amounts of pollen they produce, posing a potential health hazard for some pollen allergy sufferers. In actuality, only the male mulberry trees produce pollen; this light-weight pollen can be inhaled deeply into the lungs, sometimes triggering asthma. Conversely, female mulberry trees produce all-female flowers, which draw pollen and dust from the air. Because of this pollen-absorbing feature, all-female mulberry trees have an OPALS allergy scale rating of just 1 (lowest level of allergy potential), and some consider it “allergy-free”.

Fortunately, mulberry tree scion wood can easily be grafted onto other mulberry trees during the winter, when the tree is dormant. One common scenario is converting a problematic male mulberry tree to an allergy-free female tree, by grafting all-female mulberry tree scions to a male mulberry that has been pruned back hard. However, any new growth from below the graft(s) must be removed, as they would be from the original male mulberry tree.

Uses

The fruit of the white mulberry – an East Asian species extensively naturalized in urban regions of eastern North America – has a different flavor, sometimes characterized as refreshing and a little tart, with a bit of gumminess to it and a hint of vanilla. In North America, the white mulberry is considered an invasive exotic and has taken over extensive tracts from native plant species, including the red mulberry.

The ripe fruit is edible and is widely used in pies, tarts, wines, cordials, and tisanes. The fruit of the black mulberry (native to southwest Asia) and the red mulberry (native to eastern North America) have the strongest flavor, which has been likened to 'fireworks in the mouth’.

The fruit and leaves are sold in various forms as nutritional supplements. The mature plant contains significant amounts of reveratrol, particularly in stem bark. Unripe fruit and green parts of the plant have a white sap that may be toxic, stimulating, or mildly hallucinogenic.

Silk industry

A silkworm, Bombyx mori, feeding on a mulberry tree

Mulberry leaves, particularly those of the white mulberry, are ecologically important as the sole food source of the silkworm (Bombyx mori, named after the mulberry genus Morus), the cocoon of which is used to make silk. Other Lepidoptera larvae —which include the common emerald, the lime gawk-moth and the sycamore moth—also sometimes eat the plant.

Pigments

Mulberry fruit color derives from anthocyanins, which are under basic research for mechanisms of various diseases. Anthocyanins are responsible for the attractive colors of fresh plant foods, including orange, red, purple, black, and blue. These colors are water-soluble and easily extractable, yielding natural food colorants. Due to a growing demand for natural food colorants, their significance in the food industry is increasing.

A cheap and industrially feasible method has been developed to extract anthocyanins from mulberry fruit which could be used as a fabric tanning agent or food colorant of high color value (above 100). Scientists found that, of thirty-one Chinese mulberry cultivars tested, the total anthocyanin yield varied from 148 mg to 2725 mg per liter of fruit juice. It was also found that all the sugars, acids, and vitamins of the fruit remained intact in the residual juice after removal of the anthocyanins, so the juice could be used to produce products such as juice, wine, and sauce.

Anthocyanin content depends on climate and area of cultivation, and is particularly high in sunny climates. This finding holds promise for tropical countries that grow mulberry trees as part of the practice of sericulture to profit from industrial anthocyanin production through the recovery of anthocyanins from the mulberry fruit.

In culture

A mulberry tree in England

A Babylonian etiological myth, which Ovid incorporated in his Metamophoses, attributes the reddish purple color of the mulberry fruits to the tragic deaths of the lovers Pyramus and Thisbe. Meeting under a mulberry tree (probably the native Morus nigra,  Thisbe commits suicide by sword after Pyramus was killed by the lioness because he believed that Thisbe was eaten by her. Their splashed blood stained the previously white fruit, and the gods forever changed the mulberry's color to honor their forbidden love.

The nursery rhyme “Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush” uses the tree in the refrain, as do some contemporary American versions of the nursery rhyme “Pop Goes the Weasel”.

Vincent van Gogh featured the mulberry tree in some of his paintings, notably Mulberry Tree (Mûrier, 1889, now in Pasadena’s Norton Simon Museum). He painted it after a stay at an asylum, and he considered it a technical success.

Red Mulberry

Morus rubra, commonly known as the red mulberry, is a species of mulberry native to eastern and central North America. It is found from Ontario, Minnesota, and Vermont south to southern Florida, and west as far as southeastern South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas and Texas. There have been reports of isolated populations (very likely naturalized) in New Mexico, Idaho, and British Columbia. Common in the United States, it is listed as an endangered species in Canada, and is susceptible to hybridization with the invasive white mulberry (M. alba), introduced from Asia.

Characteristics

Red mulberry is a deciduous tree, growing to 10–15 m (35–50 ft) tall, rarely 20 m (65 ft), with a trunk up to 50 cm (20 in) in diameter. It is a small to medium-sized tree that reaches a height of 70 feet and lives up to 125 years. The leaves are alternate, 7–14 cm (2³⁄₄–5¹⁄₂ in) long and 6–12 cm (2¹⁄₄–4³⁄₄ in) broad, simple, broadly cordate, with a shallow notch at the base, typically unlobed on mature trees although often with 2-3 lobes, particularly on young trees, and with a finely serrated margin.

The upper surface of the leaves is noticeably rough, similar in texture to fine sandpaper, and unlike the lustrous upper surface of the leaves of white mulberry (M. alba). The underside of the leaves is covered with soft hairshairs. The leaf petiole exudes milky sap when severed. Red mulberry is hardy to subzero temperatures, relatively hardy to drought, pollution, and poor soil, though the white mulberry is hardier.

The flowers are relatively inconspicuous: small, yellowish green or reddish green, and opening as leaves emerge. Male and female flowers are usually on separate trees although they may occur on the same tree.

The fruit is a compound cluster of several small achenes surrounded by a fleshy calyx, similar in appearance to a blackberry, 2–3 cm (³⁄₄–1

 ¹⁄₄ in) long, when it is ripening it is red or dark purple, edible and very sweet with a good flavor.

Uses

The first English colonists to explore eastern Virginia in 1607 mentioned the abundance of both mulberry trees and their fruit, which was eaten, sometimes boiled, by the native Powhatan tribes.

Today, mulberries are eaten raw, used in fruit pastries, and fermented into wine.

The wood may be dried and used for smoking meats with a flavor that is mild and sweet.

White Mulberry

Morus alba, known as white mulberry, is a short-lived, fast-growing, small to medium-sized mulberry tree, which grows to 10–20 m tall. The species is native to northern China, and is widely cultivated and naturalized elsewhere (United States, Mexico, Australia, Kyrgyzstan, Argentina, etc.)

The white mulberry is widely cultivated to feed the silkworms employed in the commercial production of silk. It is also notable for the rapid release of its pollen, which is launched at over half the speed of sound.

Description

On young, vigorous shoots, the leaves may be up to 30 cm long, and deeply and intricately lobed, with the lobes rounded. On older trees, the leaves are generally 5–15 cm long, unlobed, cordate at the base and rounded to acuminate at the tip, and serrated on the margins. The trees are generally deciduous in temperate regions, but trees grown in tropical regions can be evergreen.

The flowers are single-sex catkins; male catkins are 2–3.5 cm long, and female catkins 1–2 cm long. Male and female flowers are usually on separate trees although they may occur on the same tree. The fruit is 1–2.5 cm long; in the species in the wild it is deep purple, but in many cultivated plants it varies from white to pink; it is sweet but bland, unlike the more intense flavor of the red mulberry and black mulberry. The seeds are widely dispersed in the droppings of birds that eat the fruit.

The white mulberry is scientifically notable for the rapid plant movement  involved in pollen release from its catkins. The stamens act as catapults, releasing stored elastic energy in just 25 µs. The resulting movement is approximately 350 miles per hour (560 km/h), over half the speed of sound, making it the fastest known movement in the plant kingdom.

Cultivation

Leaf variation

Cultivation of white mulberry for silkworms began over four thousand years ago in China. In 2002, 6,260 km² of land were devoted to the species in China.

The species is now extensively planted and widely naturalized throughout the warm temperate world. It has been grown widely from Indian subcontinent west through Afghanistan and Iran to southern Europe for over a thousand years for leaves to feed silkworms.

More recently, it has become widely naturalized in disturbed areas such as roadsides and the edges of tree lots, along with and urban areas in much of North America, where it hybridizes readily with a locally native red mulberry (Morus rubra). There is now serious concern for the long-term genetic viability of red mulberry because of extensive hybridization in some areas.

Uses

Mulberry leaves placed on trays with silkworms (Liang Kai’s Sericulture c. 1200s)

White mulberry leaves are the preferred feedstock for silkworms, and are also cut for food for livestock (cattle, goats, etc.) in areas where dry seasons restrict the availability of ground vegetation. The fruit are also eaten, often dried or made into wine.

In traditional Chinese medicine, the fruit is used to treat prematurely grey hair, to "tonify" the blood, and treat constipation and diabetes.The bark is used to treat cough, wheezing, edema, and to promote urination. It is also used to treat fever, headache, red dry and sore eyes.

Fruitless mulberry trees.

For landscaping, a fruitless mulberry was developed from a clone for use in the production of silk in the U.S. The industry never materialized, but the mulberry variety is now used as an ornamental tree where shade is desired without the fruit. A weeping cultivar of white mulberry, Morus alba 'Pendula', is a popular ornamental plant. The species has become a popular lawn tree across the desert cities of the southwestern United States, prized for its shade and also for its sweet, white fruits. The plant's pollen has become problematical in some cities where it has been blamed for an increase in hay fever.

Other uses

Snakebite"Morus alba plant leaf extract has been studied against the Indian Vipera/Daboia russelii venom induced local and systemic effects. The extract completely abolished the in vitro proteolytic and hyaluronolytic activities of the venom. Edema, hemorrhage and myonecrotic activities were also neutralized efficiently. In addition, the extract partially inhibited the pro-coagulant activity and completely abolished the degradation of A α chain of human fibrinogen. Thus, the extract processes potent antisnake venom property, especially against the local and systemic effects of Daboia russelii venom."

The cache is a tied in, camoed, "micro" pill bottle, that you have to push hard to turn, both to open and close. Please BYOP and try to keep track of the rubber band that goes around the log.