Editing Morus (plant) (section)

==Culture==
[[File:The Mulberry Tree by Vincent van Gogh.jpg|thumb|''Mulberry Tree'' by [[Vincent van Gogh]]]]

A [[Babylonia]]n [[etiological myth]], which [[Ovid]] incorporated in his ''[[Metamorphoses]]'', attributes the reddish-purple color of the mulberry fruits to the tragic deaths of the lovers [[Pyramus and Thisbe]]. Meeting under a mulberry tree (probably the native ''[[Morus nigra]]''),<ref name="ovid">{{Cite book |last=Reich |first=Lee |title=The Encyclopedia of Fruit and Nuts |date=2008 |publisher=CABI |isbn=9780851996387 |editor-last=Janick |editor-first=Jules |pages=504–507 |chapter=''Morus'' spp. mulberry |editor-last2=Paull |editor-first2=Robert E. |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=cjHCoMQNkcgC&pg=PA504}}</ref> Thisbe commits suicide by sword after Pyramus does the same, he having believed, on finding her bloodstained cloak, that she was killed by a lion. Their splashed blood stained the previously white fruit, and the gods forever changed the mulberry's colour to honour their forbidden love.<ref name=ovid/>

In the Old Testament's [[1 Maccabees]], the [[Seleucid army|Seleucids]] used the "blood of grapes and mulberries" to provoke their [[war elephant]]s in preparation for battle against [[Maccabees|Jewish rebels]].<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Fuks |first1=Daniel |last2=Amichay |first2=Oriya |last3=Weiss |first3=Ehud |date=2020-01-27 |title=Innovation or preservation? Abbasid aubergines, archaeobotany, and the Islamic Green Revolution |url=https://doi.org/10.1007/s12520-019-00959-5 |journal=Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences |language=en |volume=12 |issue=2 |pages=50 |doi=10.1007/s12520-019-00959-5 |bibcode=2020ArAnS..12...50F |issn=1866-9565}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Maxwell-Stuart |first=P. G. |date=1975 |title=1 Maccabees VI 34 Again |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/1517274 |journal=Vetus Testamentum |volume=25 |issue=2 |pages=230–233 |doi=10.2307/1517274 |jstor=1517274 |issn=0042-4935}}</ref>

The [[nursery rhyme]] "[[Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush]]" uses the tree in the refrain, as do some contemporary American versions of the nursery rhyme "[[Pop Goes the Weasel]]".{{r|bbc|asw}}

[[Vincent van Gogh]] featured the mulberry tree in some of his paintings, notably ''Mulberry Tree'' ({{lang|fr|Mûrier}}, 1889, now in [[Pasadena, California|Pasadena]]'s [[Norton Simon Museum]]). He painted it after a stay at an asylum, and he considered it a technical success.<ref>{{cite web |title=''The Mulberry Tree'', Vincent van Gogh (October 1889) |url=https://www.nortonsimon.org/art/detail/M.1976.09.P |website=Norton Simon Museum |access-date=2 March 2025}}</ref>