Broussonetia papyrifera (L.) Vent., family Moraceae . Paper Mulberry
A native of China and Japan, now widely cultivated in the east where its bark is used in papermaking. A fibre is also yielded and woven into a fine cloth, which Captain Cook saw being worn by the principal inhabitants of Otaheite. It is planted as an ornamental tree in east Asia, Europe and in eastern N. America, where it can also be found growing wild. Height to 15m (50ft), often a rounded shrub. Flowers open in June, male and female on separate trees. Male catkins are 3.7-7·5cm (1˝-3in) long, furry and often curled. Females are spherical, about 1.2cm (˝in) across. Fruit about 2·5cm (1in) across, falls in October. Leaves are rough and woolly. Compare with the true mulberries (Morus).

Broussonetia L’ Herit. ex Vent. (1799), in the family Moraceae, contains 8 species.
Description Trees to 16m, or shrubs, sometimes climbing, the twigs with milky sap. The leaves are alternate, usually deciduous, often lobed. The flowers are unisexual, with males and females on different plants. The male flowers are in pendulous, catkin-like spikes, with 4 sepals, fused at the base, no petals, and 4 stamens. Female flowers are in round heads, with 4 sepals, fused at the base to form a tube, 1 carpel, and a long, undivided style. Pollination is by wind. The fruits are round, red, with each seed surrounded by a fleshy covering extending from the enlarged sepal-tube.

Key Recognition Features The rough leaves, hairier and more delicate than those of a mulberry (Morus), and the round, hairy female flowers, which become red fruit.

Evolution and Relationships Broussonetia and the related genera Maclura and Cudrania Tréc. are close to Morus, differing mainly in details of flower and fruit.

Ecology and Geography In rough, bushy places, by roads and in woods. One species in Madagascar, the rest in China and eastern Asia, with 3 found wild in Japan, including B. papyrifera (L.) Vent., the paper-mulberry tree, which is naturalised in North America.

Comment Broussonetia papyrifera and B. kazinoki Sieb. are cultivated for making tough paper in China and Japan. The genus name comemorates Pierre Marie Auguste Broussonet (1761–1807) a biologist from Montpellier, France. Z8.