Appearance
"Morus nigra" is a deciduous tree growing to 12 m tall by 15 m broad. The leaves are 10–20 cm long by 6–10 cm broad - up to 23 cm long on vigorous shoots, downy on the underside, the upper surface rough with very short, stiff hairs. It has 308 chromosomes.The edible fruit is a compound cluster of several small drupes that are dark purple, almost black when ripe, and they are 2–3 centimetres long. Black mulberry is richly flavoured, similar to the red mulberry rather than the more insipid fruit of the white mulberry.
Uses
Black mulberries are thought to have originated in the mountainous areas of Mesopotamia and Persia. Black mulberry is planted, and often naturalised, west across much of Europe, including Ukraine, and east into China. Now they are widespread throughout Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, India, Pakistan, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine, Israel, and Turkey.The tree has long been cultivated for its edible fruit. Both the tree and the fruit are known by the Persian-derived names "toot" or "shahtoot", or, in Arabic, as shajarat tukki. Often, jams and sherbets are made from the fruit in this region.
In Europe, the largest-documented local concentration of black mulberries may be found in the vineyards of Pukanec in Slovakia, which contain 470 black mulberry trees.
The black mulberry was imported into Britain in the seventeenth century in the hope that it would be useful in the cultivation of silkworms. It was unsuccessful in that enterprise because silkworms prefer the white mulberry. However, the plantings have left a legacy of large and old trees in many country house gardens and it was listed in the Award of Garden Merit of the Royal Horticultural Society until 2013. It was much used in folk medicine, especially in the treatment of ringworm.
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