Dictionary:
mul·ber·ry (mŭl'bĕr'ē, -bə-rē)  |
[Middle English mulberrie, from Old English mōrberie and Middle Low German mūlberi, mūrberi : both from Latin mōrum + Old English berie, berry or Old High German beri, berry.]
mulberry mul'ber'ry adj.| 5min Related Video: mulberry |
| Sci-Tech Encyclopedia: Mulberry |
A genus (Morus) of trees characterized by milky sap and simple, often lobed, alternate leaves. White mulberry (M. alba) was introduced into the United States from China during the 19th century as a source of food for silkworms. The silkworm project was unsuccessful, but the trees remained and are common in cities and on the borders of forests. Red mulberry (M. rubra) grows in the eastern half of the United States and in southern Ontario. The wood is used for fence posts, furniture, interior finish, agricultural implements, and barrels.
| Food and Nutrition: mulberry |
Dark purple-red fruit of the tree Morus nigra, slightly sweet and acid, similar in shape and size to a raspberry or loganberry. There is also a white mulberry, M. alba. Of little commercial importance as a fruit; the leaves of the mulberry are the only food plant of the silk-worm.
| Food Lover's Companion: mulberry |
There are three principal varieties of the mulberry-black, red and white. The black (really purplish-black) variety is commonly found in Europe, the red in the eastern and southern United States and the white in Asia. Mulberries look somewhat like blackberries in size and shape. When fully ripe, their flavor is sweet-sour but somewhat bland. Unripe berries are inedibly sour. Mulberries are not commercially grown in the United States but grow wild from Massachusetts to the Gulf states and as far west as Nebraska. They can be eaten raw or used for jams, jellies, desserts and mulberry wine.
| US Military Dictionary: Mulberry |
Code name for the two artificial harbors built for the Normandy invasion of June 1944. Each Mulberry harbor consisted of concrete breakwaters and pontoon jetties floated across the Channel from England and sunk in place and protected by old ships which were sunk as breakwaters. The Mulberry at Omaha Beach in the American sector was destroyed by bad weather soon after it was installed, but the one at Arromanches in the British sector was used for several months.
See the Introduction, Abbreviations and Pronunciation for further details.
| Columbia Encyclopedia: mulberry |
Common Species and Their Uses
The mulberry family is most important as the basis of the silkworm industry; silkworms feed on the leaves of the mulberries (genus Morus) and sometimes of the Osage orange (Maclura pomifera). The white mulberry (M. alba) has been cultivated in China since very early times. In the Middle Ages it began to replace the black mulberry (M. nigra), which had been grown by the Greeks and Romans and, from the 9th cent., by the people of N Europe for silkworm culture. In Greek legend the berries of the white mulberry turned red when its roots were bathed by the blood of the lovers Pyramis and Thisbe, who killed themselves. Both the white and the red mulberry (M. rubra, native to North America) have been cultivated in America since colonial times, but the lack of cheap hand labor prevented the establishment of a silkworm industry. Mulberry fruits are tender and juicy and resemble blackberries. In the South the fruit of M. rubra is made into wine and is considered a valuable agricultural and wildlife feed.
The Osage orange, also called bowwood because it was used by the Osage tribe to make bows, is a hardy tree native to the S central United States. Its fruit is used as a natural insect repellent. Cultivated widely, often as a hedge plant because of its spiny, impenetrable branches, it is a source of a flexible and durable wood and of a yellow-orange dye, from the root bark, that is similar to the more widely used fustic (Maclura tinctoria). The heartwood of fustic yields a yellowish or olive dye, also called fustic, that has been used chiefly for dyeing woolens; it has largely been replaced by synthetic aniline dyes. In its native habitat of Central and South America the fustic is also a timber tree.
Fiber plants of the mulberry family include the paper mulberry (Broussonetia papyrifera) and the upas tree (Antiaris toxicara) of the East Asian tropics, where the bast fiber is utilized for rough fabrics and for paper, often after a crude retting process. The latex of the upas [Malay,=poison tree] contains a cardiac glycoside used for arrow poison; the similarly employed strychnine tree of the logania family is sometimes also called upas.
The breadfruit (Artocarpus ultilis) is cultivated as a staple food plant in the Pacific tropics and in the West Indies, where it was introduced from Polynesia in the late 18th cent.; the Bounty was carrying breadfruit plants to Jamaica when the famous mutiny occurred. Its wood, fiber, and latex are also variously utilized locally. The important fig genus includes fruit trees, ornamentals (e.g., the rubber plant), and several species renowned in the religion and legends of India (e.g., the banyan and the bo tree).
Classification
The mulberry family is classified in the division Magnoliophyta, class Magnoliopsida, order Urticales.
| Wikipedia: Morus (plant) |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Morus or Mulberry is a genus of 10–16 species of deciduous trees native to warm temperate and subtropical regions of Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas, with the majority of the species native to Asia.
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 metres (33-49 ft) tall. The leaves are alternately arranged, simple, often lobed, more often lobed on juvenile shoots than on mature trees, and serrated on the margin.
The fruit is a multiple fruit, 2-3 centimetres (0.8-1.2 in) long. The fruits when immature are white or green to pale yellow with pink edges. In most species the fruits are red when they are ripening. A fully ripened mulberry in these species is dark purple to black, edible, and sweet with a good flavor in several species. The fruits of the white-fruited cultivar of the White Mulberry on the other hand are green when unripe and white when ripe; the fruit in this cultivar is sweet, and has a very mild flavor compared with the dark fruits.
Contents |
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.
The following species are generally accepted:
|
|
The following, all from eastern and southern Asia, are additionally accepted by one or more taxonomic lists or studies; synonymy, as given by other lists or studies, is indicated in square brackets:
|
|
The ripe fruit is edible and is widely used in pies, tarts, wines and cordials. The fruit of the black mulberry, native to southwest Asia, and the red mulberry, native to eastern North America, have the strongest flavor. The fruit of the white mulberry, an east Asian species which is extensively naturalized in urban regions of eastern North America, has a different flavor, sometimes characterized as insipid. The mature plant contains significant amounts of resveratrol, particularly in stem bark.[2] The fruit and leaves are sold in various forms as nutritional supplements. Unripe fruit and green parts of the plant have a white sap that is intoxicating and mildly hallucinogenic.[3]
Black, red and white mulberry are widespread in Northern India, Azerbaijan, Jordan, Syria, Armenia, Pakistan, Iran, Turkey and Afghanistan, where the tree and the fruit are known by the Persian-derived names toot (mulberry) or shahtoot (King's or "superior" mulberry). Jams and sherbets are often made from the fruit in this region. 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.
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 pupa/cocoon of which is used to make silk. Other Lepidoptera larvae also sometimes feed on the plant including common emerald, lime hawk-moth and the sycamore.
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 tree branches pruned during the fall season (after the leaves have fallen) are cut and used to make very durable baskets which are used in a lot of village jobs related to agriculture and animal husbandry.
Anthocyanins are pigments which hold potential use as dietary modulators of mechanisms for various diseases[4][5] and as natural food colorants. As the safety of synthetic pigments is doubted and in the wake of increasing demand for natural food colorants, their significance in the food industry is increasing. Anthocyanins yield attractive colors of fresh plant foods such as orange, red, purple, black and blue. Since they are water-soluble, they are easily extractable and incorporated into aqueous food systems.
A cheap and industrially feasible method to purify anthocyanins from mulberry fruit which could be used as a fabric tanning agent or food colorant of high color value (of above 100) has been established. Scientists found that out of 31 Chinese mulberry cultivars tested, the total anthocyanin yield varied from 148 mg to 2725 mg per liter of fruit juice.[6] Total sugars, total acids and vitamins remained intact in the residual juice after removal of anthocyanins and that the residual juice could be fermented in order to produce products such as juice, wine and sauce.
Worldwide, mulberry is grown for its fruit. In traditional and folk medicine, the fruit is believed to have medicinal properties and is used for making jam, wine, and other food products. As the genera Morus has been domesticated over thousands of years and constantly been subjected to heterosis breeding (mainly for improving leaf yield), it is possible to evolve breeds suitable for berry production, thus offering possible industrial use of mulberry as a source of anthocyanins for functional foods or food colorants which could enhance the overall profitability of sericulture.
Anthocyanin content depends on climate, area of cultivation and is particularly higher in sunny climates.[7] This finding holds promise for tropical sericulture countries to profit from industrial anthocyanin production from mulberry through anthocyanin recovery.
This offers a challenging task to the mulberry germplasm resources for
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.
 |
Wikispecies has information related to: Morus (Moraceae) |
 |
Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Morus |
This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)
| Translations: Mulberry |
Dansk (Danish)
n. - morbærtræ, morbær
Nederlands (Dutch)
moerbei, moerbes, moerbeiboom
Français (French)
n. - mûrier, mûre, lie-de-vin
Deutsch (German)
n. - Maulbeere
Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - μουριά, μούρο
Italiano (Italian)
gelso, mora di gelso
Português (Portuguese)
n. - amora (f) (Bot.)
Русский (Russian)
шелковица, багровый цвет
Español (Spanish)
n. - morera, moral
Svenska (Swedish)
n. - mullbär, mullbärsträd, mullbärsfärg
中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
桑树, 深紫红色, 桑椹
中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 桑樹, 深紫紅色, 桑椹
日本語 (Japanese)
n. - クワの実, クワの木
العربيه (Arabic)
(الاسم) توت
If you are unable to view some languages clearly, click here.
To select your translation preferences click here.
| Shopping: mulberry |
 | mulberry-faced |
| foliaged |
| moroxylic |
Copyrights:
 |
 | Dictionary. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. Read more |
 |
| Sci-Tech Encyclopedia. McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science and Technology. Copyright © 2005 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. Read more |
 |
| Food and Nutrition. A Dictionary of Food and Nutrition. Copyright © 1995, 2003, 2005 by A. E. Bender and D. A. Bender. All rights reserved. Read more |
 |
| Food Lover's Companion. Food Lover's Companion. Copyright © 2001 by Barron's Educational Series, Inc. All rights reserved. Read more |
|
| US Military Dictionary. The Oxford Essential Dictionary of the U.S. Military. Copyright © 2001, 2002 by Oxford University Press, Inc. All rights reserved. Read more |
 |
| Columbia Encyclopedia. The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright © 2003, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/cup/. Read more |
 |
| Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Morus (plant)". Read more |
 |
| Translations. Copyright © 2007, WizCom Technologies Ltd. All rights reserved. Read more |
Mentioned in
