Morus nigra, called black mulberry is a species native to southwestern Asia, where it has been cultivated for millennia. It is a medium sized deciduous tree normally growing up to 8 metres and usually slightly wider in our mediterranean climate conditions. It produces small edible fruit that are almost black and very sweet when ripe. They are not a single fruit as such, but a compound cluster of several small drupes that are dark purple, almost black when ripe, and they can be up to 2.5 cm in diameter. They are eaten fresh, dried or preserved and made into jams and sherbets, particularly in the middle-east. Very nice when dried and added to mixes of nuts or muesli.

Black mulberries are in now widespread cultivation but are thought to have originated in the mountainous areas of Mesopotamia and Persia (i.e. Armenian highlands). Black mulberry is planted, and often naturalised, west across much of Europe and east into China. They are widespread throughout Armenia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, India, Pakistan, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine, Israel, and Turkey.

Like any fruit tree, the better the conditions they have the better the fruit they will produce. Nevertheless, this tree is used extensively in urban areas throughout the mediterranean and once established will survive in good soils without water. A word of caution here, if you don't collect the fruit and have a paved area below the tree it will soon become badly stained by the fallen fruit. They are not a tree to plant into a shallow red clay on an exposed hillside, unless you are a peasant shepherd willing to visit and nurture it monthly for the rest of your life. They support a wide variety of insects (not silkworm - Morus alba is used for their cultivation) and birds.