Description:

• Trees or shrubs; plants monoecious or dioecious; leaves and shoot apices deciduous
• Leaves distichously arranged, entire or lobed; 3-5-nerved, petiolate; stipules free, almost lateral, small, caducous
• Flowers in solitary axillary, unisexual spikes
• Male flowers in catkins; tepals membranous, 4-segmented, imbricate; stamens 4, filaments free, inflexed in bud
• Female flowers in short, dense heads; tepals 4, decussate, imbricate, becoming succulent in fruit
• Ovary enclosed within calyx, ovoid or subglobose; ovule pendulous; style short or obsolete; stigmas 2, (sub)equal
• Fruit a ± succulent syncarp, of persistent fleshy tepals and exocarp; endocarp crustaceous
• Seeds small, with endosperm; cotyledons thin, equal, plane, with membranous testa
• x = 14 (can also be 7) (high polyploidy, B-chromosomes)

Nomenclature:

• Morus L.
  • Linnaeus: 986 (1753)
  • Linnaeus: 424 (1754)
  • Adanson: 377 (1763)
  • Jussieu: 402 (1789)
  • Endlicher: 33 (1847)
  • Bentham: 364 (1880)
  • Engler: 72 (1889)
  • Engler: 3 (1898)
  • Rendle: 19 (1916)
  • Berg: 335 (1977)
  • Berg: 2 (1989)
  • Berg: 13 (1991)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 13, in temperate to subtropical regions of the Old and New World
• Southern Africa: Only 1 species native in Africa: Morus mesozygia Stapf, KwaZulu-Natal; 2 species are escapes from cultivation: *Morus alba L. (the White Mulberry) and *Morus japonica Audib.