Broussonetia papyrifera Seeds | Paper Mulberry

Paper Mulberry (Broussonetia papyrifera) with lobed leaves and round orange-red female fruit heads — Paper Mulberry (*Broussonetia papyrifera*): Moraceae, the fast fig relative whose bark made the first paper and whose pollen now makes headlines.

LATIN NAME: Broussonetia papyrifera

COMMON NAME: Paper Mulberry

Plant Profile

The Paper Mulberry is a fast, scrappy, historically enormous tree. Native to East and Southeast Asia, it grows ten to sixteen metres in a handful of years, with big variable leaves, lobed on young shoots and plain on old, and, because the sexes live on separate trees, two entirely different displays: males hang long soft grey catkins in spring, while females ripen spherical heads that turn bright orange-red and look, briefly, like hedgehogs made of berries.

Its bark fibre built civilisations: the inner bark served as the material of early Chinese paper and, carried across the Pacific, became tapa cloth, the fabric of Polynesian ceremony. Its fruits feed birds extravagantly, and traditional Chinese medicine files the dried fruit as chu shi zi, a kidney and vision tonic of the classical pharmacopoeia.

Science & Biotechnology

The same qualities that made it useful make it troublesome. As a pioneer it germinates on any disturbed ground, grows absurdly fast and resprouts from stumps with determination; outside its home range it has become invasive in parts of North America, and in Islamabad its male trees’ wind-borne pollen turned the species into the city’s chief seasonal allergen, a documented case study in how a useful introduction can backfire.

Sex separation matters commercially as well as medically: only female trees carry the medicinal fruit, and only males make the pollen problem, so knowing the tree’s sex system is practical knowledge for anyone planting it.

Uses & Benefits

Its honest uses remain real: papermaking fibre of the first historical rank, tapa cloth across the Pacific, livestock forage, medicine, and a pioneer’s talent for covering eroded ground fast. In gardens it should be grown with open eyes, a fascinating, fast, generous tree best sited where its self-seeding is welcome or its sex can be managed.

Craft growers who make paper by hand prize it above almost any other fibre source available from a backyard tree. Coppiced hard, it regrows shoots whose bark peels in usable lengths within two years.

Growing from Seed

Sow fresh, or store briefly dry and cool, since this seed is more forgiving than most pioneers’. Scatter on the surface of a fine compost, press in without covering, and keep at twenty degrees with even moisture; germination comes within one to three weeks and is plentiful.

Seedlings rocket away and tolerate almost anything except deep shade and waterlogging. Pot on early, plant out young, and prune hard if you want a shrub-form thicket for bark harvest. Consider the sex question before it flowers: males for pollen-free craft plantings, females where the fruit’s bird food and medicine are wanted and self-sowing can be contained. Where it is unwanted, cutting before the female fruits ripen prevents another generation.

Our Take

A tree of contradictions: first paper and modern allergen, ancient cloth and current invasive. Grow it deliberately, from fresh seed, with a clear decision about sex and site before it grows up on you.

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