Mulberry

Scientific name: Morus alba
Common name: White mulberry

White mulberry is a fruit tree belonging to the Moraceae family, native to northern China and the Korean peninsula. It grows rather rapidly, up to 20 meters in height. It is long-lived and can be secular, up to 300 years old. The trunk is irregular and richly branched, supporting a dense crown. The leaves are irregular in shape and size, but the margins always have triangular toothing. The leaves take on a light green color in spring-summer, turning and deep yellow in autumn. It gives its best in sunny places, at most in half-shade, and needs a lot of space to grow. Its root system is curious, deep orange in color, robust, and poorly adapted to dry soils.

You shall not consider the mulberry as a fruit, as it belongs to the Moraceae family, like the fig and strawberry. The tasty, sugary part is nothing more than a deceptive, but sweet, infructescence. The mulberry is a valuable tree, not only for its yummy fruits, or for its leaves that enable the production of natural silk, but also for its herbal properties also known in folk medicine. To the mulberry we owe some ancient love stories that have nothing to envy from Romeo and Juliet. The best known of these stories is of Greek origin and tells the tale of Thisbe and Pyramus, but there is an almost entirely identical story in Arab culture.

From the white mulberry fruit, fragrant essential oils are extracted and used as natural flavoring agents, mainly in cosmetic formulations and e-cigarette mixtures. It is often used to prepare jams, syrups, liqueurs and teas, as well as the famous Sicilian mulberry granita. Mulberry berries provide a good supply of antioxidants that are effective in fighting free radicals, inflammation, headaches and coughs. In addition, white mulberry is used in the treatment of conditions such as hypertension, high cholesterol and diabetes because of its low calorie content, and it is rich in resveratrol, a substance useful in fighting cancer and heart disease.