Mulberries are so delicious, so why can’t we plant mulberry trees in front of our houses?

When talking about mulberry trees, most people think of two things: first, mulberries are delicious ; second, mulberry leaves can be used to raise silkworms . Today, we can't help but fall into the cliché and still talk about these two points. After all, these are the most representative characteristics of mulberry trees. However, in addition to these two points, we also want to talk about horror stories and sexism.

"Moshangsang" | deposit / Tuchong Creative

In order to wear clothes, it is necessary to do mulberry and hemp

According to legend, the method of planting mulberry trees and raising silkworms can be traced back to the Yellow Emperor and his wife: the Yellow Emperor first taught people to plant mulberry trees, and his wife Leizu taught people to raise silkworms . Since then, mulberry trees have become valuable along with silk, and have been valued for thousands of years. According to the "Records of the Grand Historian: Biographies of Merchants", the land of Qi and Lu is suitable for planting mulberry trees. If you own a thousand acres of mulberry forest there, you will be as rich as a marquis. The hermits and sages mentioned in Du Mu's poems, " the deep will accommodate noble people, three hectares of water seedlings and a hundred mulberry trees ", can be self-sufficient with a few fields and mulberry trees.

"Leizu was the first to breed silkworms" has influenced Chinese civilization to this day. There is a Leizu Memorial Hall on Xiling Mountain at the east entrance of Xiling Gorge | Jiangshan Ruyanlai/Tuchong Creative

Therefore, since the pre-Qin period, mulberry picking and silkworm rearing have become an indispensable job for the working people. There are also many verses about mulberry picking in the Book of Songs. In the Shuowen Jiezi compiled in the Han Dynasty, "桑" is directly explained as: " Leaves and trees that silkworms eat. From 叒, 木. " Now some people believe that the word "桑" is a pictograph. In the oracle bone script, "桑" looks like a mulberry tree with large palm-like leaves, with leaves on the top and a wood character on the bottom, which means the trunk.

"桑" in oracle bone script | wikimedia commons

By the way, the word "叒" has become a little more common in recent years with its popular usage on the Internet, but it is not pronounced "you you you", but ruò. The ancients believed that the meaning of this word refers to the legendary sacred tree in the Tang Valley where the sun bathes in the east, called叒木, 榑桑, and Fusang. Whether the sacred tree of the Sun Bath Center is a mulberry tree is a myth or legend, and there is no way to verify it, but at least we can understand that mulberry trees have a lofty status in the minds of the ancients .

Fusang tree on the brick relief of Wu's Ancestral Hall | Wikimedia Commons

Meng Haoran said, " I open the window facing the field, drink wine and talk about mulberry and hemp ." He regarded himself as an ordinary farmer, and he did not forget to talk about farming while drinking. Mulberry and hemp are traditional economic plants, which actually solve the problem of clothing . Mulberry leaves are used to raise silkworms, and clothes made of silk are high-end goods; clothes made of hemp stem bark fiber are basic styles worn by ordinary people.

Mulberry picking and silkworm breeding are all for clothing | dreamstime / Tuchong Creative

Mulberry and hemp both have ancillary products. Hemp seeds can be used as a beneficial supplement to grains. There are even some different opinions on the "five grains", and in one version, hemp is listed among them. As for mulberry, in addition to producing mulberry leaves, the fruit can also be eaten, which is the so-called mulberry . In botany, people prefer to write mulberry as "mulberry", but in fact the word "葚" appeared earlier, and its original meaning was the fruit of the mulberry tree . Nowadays, the "Modern Chinese Dictionary" has both the writing of mulberry and mulberry. Anyway, you can understand it when you see it and know what it refers to.

Mulberries, when ripe, are a delicacy | Лобачев Владимир / wikimedia commons

Nowadays, it is not the era of raising silkworms for all the people. It seems that mulberries are more well-known than mulberry leaves. So I once heard people speculate that the word "桑" (mulberry) is a tree with a bunch of mulberries on it? It is the Sandulu mulberry! The ancient people said that the living conditions were not so good and they had not yet achieved fruit freedom.

Why do some people dislike mulberry trees?

As a once very important economic crop, mulberry trees do not necessarily have a good reputation among the people. For example, during the Ming and Qing Dynasties, there was a saying among the people in Beijing that "don't plant mulberry trees in front of the house, and don't plant willow trees in the back." It was taboo to plant mulberry trees in a family's yard or in front of the door. The reason for not planting mulberry trees and willow trees is not even superstition, but simply a homophonic pun: mulberry trees are homophonic to "sorrow" , and planting mulberry trees will bring dejection; willow trees are homophonic to "flow", and planting willow trees will cause the family's wealth to flow out. This saying was quite popular in North China, and it could still be heard sometimes until the late 20th century.

The story of the mulberry tree being depressed was not an original joke of the common people in the Ming and Qing dynasties. As early as the Jin Dynasty, there was such a story in the strange novel " Soushen Ji ".

It is said that there was a girl who missed her father who was away on an expedition. She said to the horse at home in a joking way: "Horse, horse, if you can bring my father back, I am willing to marry you!" The girl was ignorant and made a wish. The horse really ran away and brought the girl's father back. However, when the old father heard this, he thought, what? My daughter is going to marry a horse? This is not a joke! Not only did he forbid this human-animal marriage, he was furious and killed the horse. This caused a big disaster! The horse was killed, but the horse skin of the dead horse actually rolled up the girl, flew away in the air, and landed on the branch of a mulberry tree. The old father looked again and found that the girl had turned into a big silkworm, and the horse skin turned into a huge cocoon wrapped around it. In short, the daughter could not come back, and the happy event (whether marrying a horse is a happy event is another matter) turned into a funeral.

This is where the saying " Mulberry means mourning " comes from. Especially since the Ming Dynasty, many people no longer work in agriculture and mulberry, and mulberry trees have become a tree of little use , so the horror stories of the past have been dug up, and the mulberry tree has gradually gained a bad reputation.

Mulberry tree relatives are also worrying

If you go for a walk in the mountains, you can sometimes find " wild mulberry trees " that make people despise them - their leaves are quite large, but the clusters of fruits are very small, which makes people not want to eat them at all . It's not that these "wild mulberry trees" are poor and short-sighted, or thin and hairy, but that they are born to look like this. This kind of "wild mulberry trees" growing in the mountains are not the same species as mulberry trees, but close relatives of mulberry trees, such as Mongolian mulberry and chicken mulberry.

This type of mulberry tree has been known to people since ancient times. They are collectively called mountain mulberry trees , but they are usually not used to raise silkworms or eat mulberries. Instead, their wood is used to make earthen bows. The branches of the Mengmulberry and Chicken mulberry trees have a certain toughness, which is just right for making bows. It was quite popular in the pre-Qin period, and this production was not important, and it almost destroyed the Zhou Dynasty at that time.

During the reign of King Xuan of Zhou, there was a nursery rhyme passed down by children among the people: " The moon will rise, the sun will set; the bows made of mulberry wood and the quivers woven with tough wild grasses almost destroyed the Zhou Dynasty." The so-called "bows made of mulberry wood and the quivers woven with tough wild grasses " were bows made of mulberry wood and quivers woven with tough wild grasses. King Xuan of Zhou thought that there would be war among the people, so he issued an order to strictly prohibit the sale of mulberry wood bows and wild grass quivers. At this time, a palace maid gave birth to a "witch girl" after being pregnant for decades. This "witch girl" should have been executed, but was saved by a villager who sold mulberry bows . More than ten years later, the "witch girl" became a beauty that could overwhelm the whole country. Her name was Bao Si . She successfully seduced the next King You of Zhou, abolished the main palace, killed the crown prince, set fire to the beacon towers to trick the princes, and caused foreign races to invade the capital. The hundreds of years of foundation of the Western Zhou Dynasty were almost destroyed.

However, there are also records in history books that "檿弧箕箙" is not a folk song, but the result of divination. Anyway, the Zhou Dynasty was almost cut short. The earthen bow made of mountain mulberry was considered a low-end weapon with a suitable cost-effectiveness from the pre-Qin period to the Han and Wei dynasties. Although the earthen bow was gradually eliminated, the stem bark of Mongolian mulberry and chicken mulberry was used to make paper due to its rich fiber content, which can be regarded as a plant with both civil and military functions.

Sexism in Guano

Every year when mulberries are ripe, you can see a lot of bird droppings that have turned into the color of mulberries , either dark purple or dark red, half thin and half thick, falling on the ground in a pool, with mulberry seeds in the color. A bunch of mulberries is not actually a single fruit, but a cluster of small achenes. Each small achene is wrapped in a fleshy, sweet and juicy perianth. Whether it is a human or a bird, the fleshy perianth is the main food, and the small achenes used for reproduction are excreted with the feces.

Not only humans, but birds also like sweet and juicy mulberries | dreamstime / Tuchong Creative

If there are several large mulberry trees near relatively open grassland or green belt, the small achenes brought by bird droppings are easy to germinate, and mulberry seedlings can often be seen among the grass or in the corners. However, these small achenes scattered with the droppings must fight to the death from the moment they germinate.

Mulberry trees are dioecious plants . Female plants only produce female flowers and mulberries, while male plants only produce male flowers and do not produce fruit. Usually, the small achenes in a pool of bird droppings are likely to come from the same bunch of mulberries. In recent years, studies have shown that the root secretions of mulberry plants from the same origin will affect the growth and development of their brothers and sisters , which means that the seedlings must first go through some internal fighting.

This repulsive effect also reflects gender differences. The influence on homologous plants is more harmful to the same sex and less harmful to plants of the opposite sex. We can regard this phenomenon as a mechanism for mulberry trees to control the ratio of males to females. In addition, judging only from the effects of root secretions on other plants, the experimental results show that under conditions of sufficient nutrients and water, the result of this secret struggle is more beneficial to the growth of female plants.

In short, mulberry seedlings naturally regard the same sex as enemies , so when planting mulberry trees, it is more conducive to growth if trees of different sexes are interplanted. You see the branches are lush with leaves and fruits, and the years are peaceful. Who knows why the mulberry trees are thinking of killing their own sex and being the only ones to rule.

Author: Tian Dong

This article comes from GuokrNature (ID: GuokrNature)

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