L.
Description
Morus indica L. is a deciduous tree or shrub of the mulberry family, widely distributed across temperate and subtropical Asia and extensively cultivated. GBIF documents over 14,000 records from China, India, Taiwan, Korea, Japan, Myanmar, the Philippines and Thailand, together with introductions in Europe and the Americas, reflecting its long history of cultivation for sericulture and fruit. In the Himalaya it occurs in subtropical and lower temperate forest, along valley sides, field margins and roadsides; the photographed plant is from Nepal, the Arun Valley, at 1,700 m in May, a typical mid-elevation montane setting.
The plant is a small to medium tree with grey, fissured bark and milky latex. The leaves are alternate, ovate, often unequally cordate at the base, with a serrate or dentate margin and an acuminate apex; juvenile and coppice leaves are frequently variously lobed, a common feature of the genus. The plant is dioecious or monoecious, the inconspicuous unisexual flowers borne in short, dense, pendent axillary catkins (spikes); staminate flowers have four tepals and four stamens, pistillate flowers a superior ovary with a bifid stigma. The fruit is a fleshy sorosis (multiple fruit) formed from the accrescent perianths, ripening from greenish through red to dark purple-black and edible.
The taxonomy of Asian Morus is unsettled, with M. indica often treated as part of the variable M. alba complex and subject to differing circumscriptions. The species is of major economic importance as the principal food plant of the silkworm and as a fruit and fodder tree, and is consequently both wild and widely naturalised; it is not of conservation concern.
Author: L. · Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Flora of China Vol. 5, Flora of Nepal, Flora of Bhutan Vol. 1, Berg: Moraceae (Flora Malesiana)