Kansas Wildflowers and Grasses

WHITE MULBERRY

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Morus alba L.

Riley County, Kansas

Height: To 55 feet

Family: Moraceae - Mulberry Family

Flowering Period: April, May

Trunks:

Erect; branches unarmed; bark reddish brown or yellowish brown, furrows shallow, ridges long, narrow; wood white, soft.

Twigs:

Green to reddish green or rust colored, flexible, smooth, usually sparsely pubescent, sometimes glabrous; leaf scars oval to round; sap milky; buds yellowish brown, ovoid, .16 to .24 inch, apex rounded to acute, scales glabrous or sparsely ciliate

Leaves:

Alternate, simple, deciduous, both lobed and unlobed on same tree; petiole 1 to 2 inches, pubescent; blade ovate, 2.5 to 4 inches long, 1.2 to 2.4 inches wide; base heart-shaped, wedge-shaped or truncate; margins often irregularly lobed, coarsely toothed; tip short-pointed; lower surface glabrous or primary veins and vein axils pubescent; upper surface glabrous, glossy.

Flowers:

Catkins; staminate catkins in leaf axils on new growth, drooping, 5-30-flowered, .4 to 2 inches; peduncles .12 to .8 inch; pedicels absent; pistillate catkins in leaf axils on new growth, drooping to spreading or erect, cylindric, 3-25-flowered, .2 to .6 inch; peduncles .08 to .24 inch, pedicels absent. Flowers unisexual, more or less radially symmetric; staminate: sepals 4-5, distinct, whitish green to greenish yellow, often tinged red, ovate to elliptic, .06 to .08 inch, adaxially pubescent, distally ciliate, apex acute; petals absent; stamens 4; pistillate: sepals 2-4, somewhat connate, calyx becoming fleshy in fruit, lobes green, sometimes tinged white or purple, ovate, distally ciliate, apex acute; petals absent; pistil 1, ovary superior, 2-locular; styles 2.

Fruit:

May-June; multiple, white, red, or dark purple, .6 to 1 inch long, .3 to .4 inch thick, glabrous, fleshy; achene 1 per ovary, tan or light brown, flattened-ovoid, .08 to .1 inch.

Habitat:

Margins of woods, thickets, fencerows, and disturbed sites. Sometimes planted as shade trees.

Distribution:

Throughout Kansas

Origin:

Introduced

Uses:

The Cherokee used the fruit for food and took infusions of bark as a purgative and laxative.

Comments:

White mulberry, the primary food plant of Bombyx mori, the domesticated silk moth, was introduced to North America in the early 1600s with the hope of establishing a silk industry. The oldest collections of Morus alba from Kansas are deposited in the Kansas State University Herbarium and date back to 1884 and 1885.

See red mulberry

White mulberry staminate and pistillate catkins