Paper mulberry

Family

Moraceae

Habit

Tree

Height

9 m

Spread

9.1 m

Growth

medium

Lifespan

50 years

First yield

after 4 years

Hardiness

zone 6–11

Shade tolerance

full sun

Soil

Sand, Silt, Loam

Soil moisture

semi-dry – very moist

pH

5.5 – 7.5

Edible: The globular fruiting heads are a striking orange when ripe and carry numerous fleshy, thread-like individual fruits that project well out from the surface. They taste sweet and are eaten raw; their aroma is regarded as exceptionally fine, though the quantity of flesh is small. The fruiting body underneath, by contrast, is dry, fibrous and practically tasteless — bite into it and, by consistent accounts, you are chewing what feels like stiff cardboard. The species is therefore no use for a worthwhile fruit harvest, let alone for self-sufficiency, but it makes a perfectly good nibble straight from the shrub. Young leaves are cooked and eaten as a vegetable, and the flowers are considered edible too.

Other uses: The bast fibres of the bark have been used to make paper, cloth and rope for over a thousand years; the name goes back to this. The fibres provide the raw material for high-grade East Asian handmade papers and were at the same time the most important source of bark cloth, known in the Pacific as tapa. For this the bast is soaked, beaten and spread into sheets. The wood is light and soft and plays no significant role.

Undemanding and decidedly vigorous: three to four metres of height are reached in about two years. It calls for a sunny, warm position on free-draining soil of medium quality; air pollution and urban climate are well tolerated. The young growth in spring is frost-sensitive, and a position without early morning sun reduces damage. Expect strong spread: the shallow-running root system throws up dense stands, and where male and female plants stand together, abundant self-seeding is added. In warmer positions the species escapes reliably as a result and is listed regionally as invasive. This needs weighing before planting outside controlled sites — once established, it is hard to push back.

Dioecious, occasionally monoecious — fruit set generally requires both sexes. Its ornamental value lies in the unusual globular fruiting heads with their orange, thread-like outgrowths and in the highly variable leaves, which on the same plant may be entire, lobed or deeply slashed. Vigorous, fast-growing and suckering: this is a plant for large areas and pioneer situations rather than for the small garden.

Originally native to East Asia, from China and Japan across Korea to Taiwan and Indochina. As a fibre plant the species was spread early into South-East Asia and across the Pacific as far as Polynesia, where it was passed on vegetatively only. Today it is naturalised across large parts of North America, southern Europe and Africa and is widely regarded as invasive there; it is also escaping increasingly in the urban climates of Central Europe.

Grows as a pioneer woody plant along woodland edges, in clearings, on waste ground and rubble sites, frequently on disturbed soils along roads, railway land and riverbanks. It prefers warm, sunny positions on free-draining, moderately fertile substrates; urban climates with high heat load and polluted air are tolerated exceptionally well. In secondary forest the species colonises open ground rapidly and forms dense, even-aged stands there.