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Jean Lavigne's avatar

Thank you for protesting. We need more people to wake up and do it in the US.

I LOVE mulberries but I've never seen them (neither the trees nor the berries for sale) in the US. I suppose people decided a long time ago that the trees are too messy, and the berries are too fragile for our commodity food system.

I haven't seen them in France either, and there's not even a separate word for them in French. They use the word mûre (blackberry) for the fruit, even though it comes from a tree not a bramble, and is in a completely different family (Moraceae for the mulberry, Rosaceae for the blackberry). The rare people who know it exists use "mûre de mûrier" (blackberry from the blackberry tree) for the mulberry and "mûre de ronce" (blackberry from the vine) for the true blackberry.

Corrine's avatar

My friends call their tree, "l'arbre qui chie."

Jean Lavigne's avatar

That sounds about right :-)

Shayma Owaise Saadat's avatar

I love this, Nom: “This human flexibility, this preparedness for change, is part of living in this climate, with its abrupt shifts that can disconcert.”

Also, my gran’s driveway in Lahore was always stained purple like that during shahtoot season. And again, during jamun season. Maybe that’s why I associate the colour purple / magenta with her x

Elisabeth Luard's avatar

Wise words on the mono-farming front, Naomi.

NAOMI DUGUID's avatar

It's interesting this question of the names for mulberry. In Farsi they're "tut" pronounced 'toot'. And the same word in Georgian, Azeri, etc. In Urdu shahtoot, I'm told. But it didn't travel west, this root, it seems...

Jean Lavigne's avatar

They have a lot of them in Italy, where the fruit is called "mora di gelso." This is where I first encountered them. Like currants, they come in three colors: black, red, and white. One day I picked the white ones and we brought them to the market, where people over 60 were very happy to pay a premium for the chance to re-experience something from childhood. It's also a very popular sorbet flavor in Italy.

Ken Fornataro's avatar

"Wild bombings, declarations of war, designed to distract us from other unsavory and damaging actions and behaviours (the theft of benefits from the poor, the corruption of the rich, etc). Powerful people, elected with the help of big money, most of them authoritarian in temperament, are making terrible decisions to bomb or starve people, to strip away rights, to undermine the rule of law, to take money from the poor to enrich the wealthy. It’s tempting to fall into completely negative thinking along the lines of: what can one person do?" Get and Stay Loud.