Roxburgh's Trees of India: Indian Mulberry
Scottish botanist William Roxburgh spent over 30 years in India documenting Indian plants. This is the story of one plant, Indian Mulberry.
BRIT Collections
Botanical Research Institute of Texas | Fort Worth Botanic Garden
Plant specimen by Charles Turner WarrenBRIT Collections
William Roxburgh (1751-1815)
The watercolor illustrations in this story were created by local Indian artists in Calcutta. Scottish botanist William Roxburgh commissioned the drawings on behalf of the East India Company.
Plant specimen (ca. 1812 - 1814, Calcutta) by Unknown Artist commissioned by William RoxburghBRIT Collections
“Company School” is a broad term used by art historians to describe a variety of hybrid Indo-European style of paintings that developed in India in the 18th and 19th centuries by Indian artists under the patronage of various East India Companies.
Most Company paintings were described as small and intimate, reflecting the Indian miniature tradition, although natural history paintings of plants and flora were usually life-size.
Indian Mulberry
The illustrations seen here are all of Morinda citrifolia, a tree in the Coffee or Madder family (Rubiaceae). The coffee family is large, with well over 10,000 species and is concentrated in the tropics and subtropics. The family is the source of coffee.
One tree, many names
It's called Indian Mulberry, Beach Mulberry, Great Morinda, or Noni in English, but in India it's Bartundi (Hindi), Hurdi (Bengali), Nagakunda (Marathi), Mogali (Telugu), Nuna (Tamil), or Surangi (Gujarati).
Plant specimen (ca. 1812 - 1814, Calcutta) by Unknown Artist commissioned by William RoxburghBRIT Collections
What's in a name?
The genus Morinda comes from Latin words morus (mulberry) and indica (Indian). Look at the fruit in the drawing...
...doesn't it look like a mulberry fruit?
Plant specimen (2021-06-22) by AitorOriginal Source: Observation recorded on iNaturalist Panama
Speaking of fruit...
Joseph F. Rock (The Indigenous Trees of the Hawaiian Islands, 1913) notes, “the fruit when mature, is foetid and of a yellow color. In Fiji the fruit is eaten either raw or cooked." Indeed, despite its odor, the fruit is still a staple food across many cultures.
Citrus limon (lemon), Hampton Court Palace (2020) by Richard Lea-HairHistoric Royal Palaces
Back to the name
The species name citrifolia comes from Citrus- (lemon-like) and folia (leaves), having leaves like the lemon tree!
Plant specimen (2019-04-15) by Lisa BennettOriginal Source: Observation recorded on iNaturalist NZ
Indian Mulberry is a small tree with a trunk up to 15 feet (4.5 meters) in height. The wood is described as intensely yellow when fresh-cut. It is widely distributed and cultivated.
Morinda citrifolia (common name Indian Mulberry) specimen from United States (1962-07-17) by Jean R. MatsunamiBRIT Collections
According to The Flora Sylvatica for Southern India (1978), Indian Mulberry roots yield a valuable red dye which is fixed with alum; the red thread used in carpet-making and red turbans are often dyed with it.
A beautiful and useful tree, Indian mulberry is native to Southeast Asia and Australasia but now grows throughout the tropics. Polynesian sailors helped spread the plant across the Pacific.
Botanical Research Institute of Texas
Story created by Barney Lipscomb.
References:
Beddome RH. 1978. The flora sylvatica for southern India: containing quarto plates of all the principal timber trees in southern India and Ceylon, accompanied by a botanical manual, with descriptions of every known tree and shrub, and analysis of every genus not figured in the plates. Delhi: Periodical Expert Book Agency.
Pieroni A. 2005. Prance G, Nesbitt M, eds. The Cultural History of Plants. Routledge. ISBN 0415927463.
Rock J F. 1913. The indigenous trees of the Hawaiian Islands. Honolulu, T.H.
Vattakaven T, George R, Balasubramanian D, Réjou-Méchain M, Muthusankar G, Ramesh B, Prabhakar R. 2016. India Biodiversity Portal: An integrated, interactive and participatory biodiversity informatics platform. Biodiversity Data Journal 4:e10279. https://indiabiodiversity.org/
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