Ak Dut

Morus alba is sometimes planted and possibly naturalized in Arizona, California, and New Mexico. It is reported from Washington as a local escape.

Mulberry leaves provide the natural food for silkworms. Commercially cultivated mulberries are varieties of Morus alba ; they are prized as shade trees with edible fruits.

Morus alba and M . rubra are both highly variable and are often confused. Both species have deeply lobed to entire leaves and are variable in pubescence. Some individuals are intermediate in leaf pubescence, suggesting the possibility of hybridization.

Native Americans used infusions made from the bark of Morus alba medicinally in various ways: as a laxative, as a treatment for dysentary, and as a purgative (D. E. Moerman 1986.

The leaves provide food for silkworms, the bark fiber is used for textiles and paper, and the bark is also used for medicine.

The white mulberry tree is cultivated and subspontaneous in all . parts of Pakistan from sea level to 3500 m. It is grown for rearing silk worms and for its edible fruits which are cooling and laxative. The fruit is also used for sore throat, dyspepsia and melancholia. It is collected, dried and used as winter food by the Kalash tribes of the Bumboret and Ayun valleys in Chitral. The bark possesses vermifuge and purgative properties. The wood is used chiefly for making hockey sticks, badminton and tennis rackets, cricket bats and stumps. It is also suitable for house building, agricultural implements, furniture & fuel.

Shrubs or trees , to 15 m. Bark brown tinged with red or yellow, thin, shallowly furrowed, with long, narrow ridges. Branchlets orange-brown or dark green with reddish cast, pubescent or occasionally glabrous; lenticels reddish brown, elliptic, prominent. Buds ovoid, 4-6 mm, apex acute to rounded; outer scales yellow-brown with dark margins, glabrous or with a few marginal trichomes; leaf scars half round, bundle scars numerous, in circle. Leaves: stipules ovate to lanceolate, 5-9 mm, pubescent; petiole 2.5-5 cm, short-pubescent. Leaf blade ovate, often deeply and irregularly lobed, (6-)8-10 × 3-6 cm, base cuneate, truncate, or cordate, margins coarsely serrate to crenate, apex acute to short-acuminate; surfaces abaxially glabrous or sparingly pubescent along major veins or in tufts in axils of principal lateral veins and midribs, adaxially glabrous to sparsely pubescent. Catkins: peduncle and axis pubescent; staminate catkins 2.5-4 cm; pistillate catkins 5-8 mm. Flowers: staminate and pistillate on same or different plants. Staminate flowers: sepals distinct, green with red tip, ca. 1.5 mm, pubescent; filaments ca. 2.7 mm. Pistillate flowers: ovary green, ovoid, slightly compressed, ca. 2 mm, glabrous; style branches divergent, red-brown, 0.5-1 mm; stigma papillose. Syncarps red when immature, becoming black, purple, or nearly white, cylindric, 1.5-2.5 × 1 cm; achenes light brown, ovoid, 2-3 mm.

Shrubs or trees, 3-10 m tall. Bark gray, shallowly furrowed. Branches finely hairy. Winter buds reddish brown, ovoid, finely hairy. Stipules lanceolate, 2-3.5 cm, densely covered with short pubescence. Petiole 1.5-5.5 cm, pubescent; leaf blade ovate to broadly ovate, irregularly lobed, 5-30 × 5-12 cm, abaxially sparsely pubescent along midvein or in tufts in axil of midvein and primary lateral veins, adaxially bright green and glabrous, base rounded to ± cordate, margin coarsely serrate to crenate, apex acute, acuminate, or obtuse. Male catkins pendulous, 2-3.5 cm, densely white hairy. Female catkins 1-2 cm, pubescent; peduncle 5-10 mm, pubescent. Male flowers: calyx lobes pale green, broadly elliptic; filaments inflexed in bud; anthers 2-loculed, globose to reniform. Female flowers: sessile; calyx lobes ovoid, ± compressed, with marginal hairs; ovary sessile, ovoid; style absent; stigmas with mastoidlike protuberance, branches divergent, papillose. Syncarp red when immature, blackish purple, purple, or greenish white when mature, ovoid, ellipsoid, or cylindric, 1-2.5 cm. Fl. Apr-May, fr. May-Aug.

A monoedous, deciduous, 8-15 m or rarely up to 20 m tall tree with a dense, compact leafy crown. Trunk c.1.5-2 m in circumference, with dark grey-brown, rough, vertically fissured bark, tender twigs hairy to glabrescent. Leaves. with a crisped hairy, filiform,1-3 (-3.5) cm long petiole; lamina narrow to broad. ovate, (2.5-) 5-15 cm long, (2.5-) 4-12 cm wide, 3-costate from truncate to shallowly cordate base, upper surface glabrous, midrib and principal wins pubescent, secondary veins and ultimate veinlets glabrous, margin regularly serrate or crenate-serrate or ± irregularly 2-serrate, apex obtuse, acute or shortly acuminate; stipules lanceolate, brownish membranous, hairy. Male catkins 10-20 (-30) mm long including slender, hairy peduncle, c. 5.6 mm broad, with lax flowers. Male flowers: sepals free, broadly ovate, c. 2.5 mm long, cucullate, obtuse, glabrous to ± hairy; staminal filaments ± equal to sepals, with ovate, exserted anthers. Female catkins ovoid, (2) 5-10 (-12) mm long, with out equally long or slightly longer peduncle. Female flowers: sepals suborbicular, c. as long as or slightly larger than of male flowers, glabrous or ± ciliate on margins; ovary with glabrous free styles. Sorosis ovoid, (10-) 15-25 mm long, 5-8 mm across, white to pinkish-purple or black, sweet, edible.

introduced; Ont.; Ala., Ark., Colo., Conn., Del., D.C., Fla., Ga., Ill., Ind., Iowa, Kans., Ky., La., Maine, Md., Mass., Mich., Minn., Miss., Mo., Nebr., N.H., N.J., N.Y., N.C., Ohio, Okla., Pa., R.I., S.C., S.Dak., Tenn., Tex., Vt., Va., W.Va., Wis.; Europe; native to e Asia.

Distribution: Native of China and probably in temperate Asia, now widely distributed in Japan, China, Malaya, Burma, Indo-Pak. Subcontinent westwards to N. Africa, South & Central Europe; introduced in the New world.

Fl. Per.: April-September.

Flowering spring-summer.

Disturbed areas, woodland margins, fencerows, dry to moist thickets; 0-1500m.

* Originally endemic to C and N China, now cultivated throughout China [widely cultivated throughout the world].

Morus alba var. tatarica (Linnaeus) Seringe; M . Tatarica Linnaeus