Most of us know the mulberry tree from a simple children’s song, a cheerful tune about dancing around a bush on a cold and frosty morning. But this familiar plant is far more than a backdrop for a nursery rhyme. For thousands of years, it has stood as a silent witness to human history, its leaves, fruit, and branches absorbing our most powerful stories. It has been called the “tree of life” and an “herb of immortality,” a plant so useful and significant that the Roman poet Virgil named it “L’arbre D’or,” or the tree of gold.
The mulberry tree is a living landmark, carrying tales of tragic love in ancient Babylon, whispering divine messages on the battlefields of ancient Israel, building empires in sacred China, and offering hope to a troubled artist in a French garden. To understand the mulberry is to read a secret history of human experience, written in its leaves, its wood, and the deep, dark color of its fruit.
The Short Answer: A Tree of Many Meanings
The mulberry tree does not have one single, simple meaning. Instead, it is a powerful and complex symbol that represents a wide spectrum of human life and emotion. Across different cultures and throughout history, it has stood for tragic love and death, patience and wisdom, divine guidance and faith, abundance and nurturing, and the profound resilience of the human spirit.
To make sense of its many roles, we can think of the mulberry tree as playing four key parts in our collective story. It is a Witness, silently observing human tragedy and bearing its mark forever. It is a Messenger, carrying divine signals from a higher power to humanity. It is a Provider, offering the essential sustenance that builds civilizations and symbolizes abundance. And it is a Muse, inspiring artists and writers to explore our deepest emotions.
A recurring theme in these roles is that the mulberry tree often serves as a passive but essential stage for human drama or a medium for a greater force. It does not cause the tragic events in the famous myth of Pyramus and Thisbe, but it bears the permanent, blood-red stain of their love and loss. It does not fight the battle for King David, but its rustling leaves carry the divine signal for victory. It does not create silk on its own, but it provides the vital nourishment that allows the silkworm to spin its precious thread. This unique ability to absorb and reflect the human experiences that unfold in its presence is what allows one tree to hold so many different and profound meanings.
Table 1: Mulberry Symbolism Across Cultures
| Culture/Context | Core Symbolism | Key Story or Concept |
| Ancient Rome/Greece | Tragic Love, Death, Memorial | The myth of Pyramus and Thisbe staining the berries with their blood. |
| Biblical Israel (Old Testament) | Divine Guidance, God’s Presence | The rustling leaves signaling to King David when to attack. |
| Biblical Christianity (New Testament) | Deep-Rooted Obstacles, Faith | Jesus’s metaphor for faith being able to uproot the unmovable. |
| Ancient China | Abundance, Nurturing, Fertility, Life | The foundation of sericulture (silk) and a symbol of the homeland. |
| 19th-Century Art | Resilience, Hope, Perseverance | Vincent van Gogh’s painting The Mulberry Tree during his asylum stay. |
| The Natural World | Patience, Wisdom, Growth | The tree’s unique cycle of budding late but growing quickly. |
A Tale of Two Lovers: The Myth of the Blood-Stained Berries
Perhaps the most famous story associated with the mulberry tree is a heartbreaking tale of forbidden love, recorded over 2,000 years ago by the Roman poet Ovid in his masterpiece, Metamorphoses. It is the story of Pyramus and Thisbe, the “original star-crossed lovers” who lived in the ancient city of Babylon.
Pyramus was the most handsome young man in the city, and Thisbe the most beautiful young woman. They lived in houses that were connected, but their love was forbidden. Their families were bitter rivals and refused to let them wed. Their only way to communicate was to whisper their feelings to each other through a small crack in the wall that separated their homes. Unable to bear their separation any longer, they devised a secret plan. They would sneak out of the city at night and meet at a well-known landmark: a mulberry tree with bright, white berries that stood near the tomb of an ancient king.
That night, Thisbe arrived first. As she waited for her love, a lioness, its mouth still bloody from a recent kill, came to a nearby spring to drink. Terrified, Thisbe fled to a cave for safety, but in her haste, she dropped her veil. The lioness, finding the veil, toyed with it in its bloody jaws before disappearing back into the woods.
A short time later, Pyramus arrived. He saw the lioness’s tracks in the dust and then, to his horror, he found Thisbe’s veil, torn and stained with blood. He immediately assumed the worst: that the love of his life had been killed by a wild beast. Overcome with grief and guilt for having asked her to meet in such a dangerous place, he drew his sword. Crying out her name, he plunged the blade into his own side. His blood spurted high into the air, spraying the branches of the mulberry tree and staining its white berries a deep, dark crimson.
When she felt it was safe, Thisbe emerged from the cave, eager to tell Pyramus of her narrow escape. But when she returned to the tree, she found him dying on the ground. She wept and held him, but it was too late. After he was gone, she took the same sword that had killed him and, praying that their families would bury them together in a single tomb, she took her own life.
According to the myth, the gods heard her final prayer. Moved by the tragedy of the two lovers, they decreed that the fruit of the mulberry tree would forever remain the dark, blood-stained color it had become that night, serving as an eternal memorial to their powerful and forbidden love.
This ancient story is a powerful example of how early civilizations created myths to explain the world around them—in this case, offering a dramatic reason for why mulberries have their deep red and purple color. The tale was so influential that it has been retold for centuries, most famously inspiring William Shakespeare’s iconic play Romeo and Juliet. Shakespeare also used the story in a comedic way in his play A Midsummer Night’s Dream, where a group of clumsy actors performs a disastrous version of the Pyramus and Thisbe tragedy, with Thisbe waiting for her love “in mulberry shade”. Because of this myth, the mulberry tree became a lasting literary symbol, a kind of shorthand for tragic love, death, and remembrance that authors could use to add layers of ancient meaning to their own stories.
Whispers of the Divine: The Mulberry in Sacred Texts
Beyond the world of myth, the mulberry tree also holds a special place in some of the world’s most sacred religious texts, where it serves as a powerful symbol of faith and divine communication.
A Signal for a King: The Tree in the Old Testament
In the Hebrew Bible, the mulberry tree plays a crucial role in a story about King David, one of ancient Israel’s greatest leaders. In the books of 2 Samuel and 1 Chronicles, David is preparing to lead his army into battle against a formidable enemy, the Philistines. Before attacking, he asks God for guidance. God gives him a very specific instruction: do not attack the enemy head-on. Instead, circle around behind them and wait near a grove of mulberry trees. God tells him to wait for a sign: “As soon as you hear the sound of marching in the tops of the mulberry trees, move quickly, because this will mean the LORD has gone out in front of you to strike the Philistine army”.
David obeys. He waits patiently until he hears the mysterious rustling sound in the treetops, and then he leads his men to a decisive victory. In this story, the mulberry trees are not just plants; they are a sacred instrument of communication between the divine and the human world. They symbolize God’s presence, the importance of listening for divine guidance, and the necessity of patience and obedience. The rustling leaves become a holy signal, assuring the king that he is not fighting alone.
It is worth noting that some modern scholars debate whether the original Hebrew word, “bekhaim,” truly translates to “mulberry.” Some suggest it may have been a balsam or aspen tree. However, for centuries, tradition has identified it as the mulberry, and regardless of the exact species, its symbolic function in the story remains unchanged: it is a natural element chosen by God to deliver a message of hope and victory.
Uprooting Bitterness: The Tree in the New Testament
Centuries later, the mulberry tree appears again in the New Testament, used by Jesus in a powerful lesson about faith. In the Gospel of Luke, his disciples ask him to increase their faith. Jesus replies with a striking metaphor: “If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be pulled up by the roots and be planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you”.
Jesus’s choice of the mulberry tree was deliberate and would have been deeply meaningful to his audience. The mulberry is known for having an incredibly vigorous, deep, and penetrating root system that makes it almost impossible to remove once it is established. By choosing this specific tree, Jesus was not just talking about any obstacle; he was using the mulberry to symbolize a problem that is deep-rooted, stubborn, and seemingly permanent. This could be a long-held bitterness, a deep resentment, a destructive habit, or a crippling sense of doubt—things that can feel as immovable as a tree with roots that go down for yards. The lesson is profound: even the smallest amount of genuine faith has the power to overcome the most entrenched and difficult challenges in our lives.
When viewed together, these two biblical accounts show a fascinating evolution in the tree’s spiritual symbolism. In the Old Testament story, the mulberry is part of an external, national event—a divine signal for a physical battle that will determine the fate of a kingdom. In the New Testament parable, the tree becomes a metaphor for an internal, personal struggle—the spiritual battle to uproot bitterness and unbelief from one’s own heart. This development reflects a broader shift in religious thought, moving from a focus on the collective destiny of a nation to the intimate, spiritual transformation of the individual. The same tree, in different eras, is used to teach different but equally powerful lessons about the nature of faith.
The Thread of Civilization: Silk, Sustenance, and the East
In the East, particularly in China, the mulberry tree is not just a symbol; it is a foundational pillar of civilization itself. For more than 5,000 years, the tree has been at the heart of Chinese culture, economy, and spirituality, all because of its unique relationship with a tiny creature: the silkworm, Bombyx mori.
The leaves of the white mulberry tree are the only food that the silkworm will eat. This simple biological fact made the mulberry tree the indispensable cornerstone of sericulture, the ancient practice of raising silkworms to produce silk. This luxurious fabric became so valuable that it shaped China’s economy for millennia and launched the legendary Silk Road, a network of trade routes that connected the East with the West. Because the tree provided the sustenance that created such immense wealth and beauty, it became a powerful symbol of abundance, nurturing, and provision. In a deeper sense, it also came to represent self-sacrifice, as the tree gives of its own leaves so that something precious can be created. This idea is beautifully captured in the writings of the ancient Chinese philosopher Mencius, who advised that planting mulberry trees around a home would ensure that even the elderly could wear warm silk clothing.
The tree’s significance in China goes even deeper. It was worshipped as a sacred symbol of fertility and life. Ancient rituals were performed in mulberry groves to pray for abundant harvests and many children, and some myths even tell of the first humans being born from a mulberry tree. The emotional connection to the tree was so strong that the term “Sangzi,” which translates to “Mulberry and Catalpa,” became a poetic and heartfelt metaphor for one’s homeland or ancestral village, a place of deep belonging and memory.
Interestingly, the mulberry tree’s promise of wealth played out very differently in the West. In the 1830s and 1840s, the United States was swept up in a phenomenon known as “Mulberry Mania”. Believing that America could build its own silk industry to rival China’s, people became obsessed with the mulberry tree. It was seen as a symbol of “morally upright productiveness,” and a speculative bubble formed around it. Entrepreneurs and farmers bought mulberry cuttings at wildly inflated prices, convinced they were on the path to easy riches. Prominent figures like President John Quincy Adams promoted the idea, suggesting that mulberry cultivation could “place the farmer on the same basis as the capitalist”. However, this speculative fever was short-lived. A combination of a heavy freeze in the 1840s and a devastating blight wiped out the trees and the fledgling industry, causing the bubble to burst and fortunes to be lost. Today, the many “Mulberry Streets” that dot American cities are one of the few remaining echoes of this forgotten craze.
The contrast between these two stories is striking. It reveals how the same tree, and the same promise of abundance, can be interpreted in profoundly different ways. In China, the mulberry represents a sustainable, multi-millennial tradition rooted in community, patience, and a respectful relationship with nature. In 19th-century America, it briefly became a symbol of unsustainable, individualistic greed and a get-rich-quick mentality that ended in failure. The mulberry tree, in this sense, acts as a mirror, reflecting the underlying values of the cultures that cultivate it. It shows one society’s long-term, harmonious approach to nature’s gifts and another’s short-term, speculative frenzy.
A Muse for the Masters: The Mulberry in Art and Literature
With such a rich and dramatic history, it is no surprise that the mulberry tree has captured the imaginations of some of the world’s greatest artists and writers, serving as a powerful muse for exploring themes of love, death, and the resilience of the human spirit.
Van Gogh’s Tree of Life and Resilience
In October 1889, the Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh created one of his most vibrant and emotionally charged masterpieces, simply titled The Mulberry Tree. The context of the painting is crucial to understanding its meaning. Van Gogh painted it while he was a voluntary patient at the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, France. He had committed himself there to recover from a series of severe mental health crises, including the infamous incident in which he severed part of his own ear.
During this turbulent time, Van Gogh found solace and inspiration in the asylum’s garden. The painting depicts a gnarled, twisted mulberry tree, its branches reaching out like arms, covered in a “flaming foliage” of brilliant yellow leaves. The tree stands on rocky ground, set against a swirling, turbulent sky of deep blue. Van Gogh applied the paint very thickly—a technique called impasto—giving the surface of the canvas a textured, almost sculptural quality.
For Van Gogh, this tree became a profound personal symbol. It represented resilience, perseverance, and the tenacious, unwavering power of life in the face of overwhelming adversity. The sturdy, vibrant tree standing tall against a chaotic and stormy sky was a metaphor for his own struggle to find beauty and hope amidst his inner turmoil. He saw in the tree a reflection of his own indomitable spirit and his desperate will to survive and create.
This interpretation is a powerful act of symbolic reclamation. For centuries, Western literature had primarily associated the mulberry tree with the tragic myth of Pyramus and Thisbe—a story of failed love, despair, and suicide. Van Gogh, in one of the darkest moments of his own life, looked at this very same tree and chose to see something entirely different. He did not see an emblem of death, but a radiant symbol of life and endurance. He transformed the tree of tragedy into his personal tree of life, a testament to the power of an artist to reshape a collective symbol to fit a personal narrative of hope.
Echoes in Literature: From Shakespeare to Cather
Van Gogh’s hopeful interpretation stands in contrast to a long literary tradition that often returns to the mulberry’s darker, more tragic roots. The Roman poet Pliny the Elder praised the tree for its practical wisdom, calling it the “wisest of trees” because it waits to bud until all danger of frost has passed. But it is the bloody myth from Ovid that has echoed most loudly through the halls of literature.
William Shakespeare, as mentioned, used the Pyramus and Thisbe story as the basis for the comical play-within-a-play in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Hundreds of years later, the American novelist Willa Cather drew on the same ancient myth in her novel O Pioneers! In the book, two forbidden lovers, Emil and Marie, are murdered under a mulberry tree. Cather describes how the “whiteness of the tree” is stained with their blood, a direct and unmistakable allusion to the Ovidian myth. By placing this modern tragedy at the foot of a mulberry tree, Cather connects her characters’ fate to an ancient, repeating human story of forbidden love and loss, suggesting that some human dramas are timeless.
The Wisdom of the Woods: Lessons from the Tree Itself
Beyond the stories we have projected onto it, the mulberry tree also carries symbolic meaning in its very nature—in the way it grows, fruits, and interacts with the world.
The ancient observation made by Pliny the Elder, that the mulberry is the “wisest of trees” for not budding until the cold weather has truly passed, has made it a symbol of patience, caution, and wisdom. It does not rush into spring but waits for the right moment. However, this patience is balanced by a contrasting quality. Once the danger of frost is gone, the tree’s buds emerge and its leaves grow with incredible speed, seemingly overnight. This has led to an association with expediency and rapid growth.
The tree is also a powerful symbol of abundance and generosity. A single mature mulberry tree can produce an enormous amount of sweet, juicy fruit, providing a feast for humans, birds, and countless other animals. It gives freely and sustains many, embodying the idea of nature’s bounty.
This generosity, however, is part of a more complex picture. In folklore, the tree reveals a deep duality. In some traditions, its wood was seen as a powerful protectant against evil, used to craft magical wands that could focus a person’s willpower. Sleeping with its leaves under a pillow was even believed to induce psychic dreams. Yet, in German folklore, the tree had a sinister reputation; it was believed that the devil used the mulberry’s gnarled roots to polish his boots, associating it with evil.
This pattern of opposing forces is key to understanding the mulberry’s symbolic power. It is both patient and expedient. It is a symbol of life and abundance (through its fruit and its role in creating silk) and a permanent memorial to death (in the myth of Pyramus and Thisbe). It is seen as sacred and wise in some cultures, yet demonic in others. This inherent duality, this ability to contain contradictions, is what makes it such a rich and enduring symbol. It does not represent one simple idea but instead reflects the complex, often paradoxical, nature of life itself.
Conclusion: A Witness to Human History
From the cheerful nursery rhyme to the depths of human tragedy, the mulberry tree has stood as a quiet but constant presence in our collective imagination. Its journey through our stories reveals its remarkable capacity to absorb and reflect our most profound experiences. It has been the tragic witness to forbidden love, its berries forever stained in memory of Ovid’s star-crossed lovers. It has been the divine messenger for King David, its rustling leaves carrying a signal of victory from God. It has been the nurturing provider that formed the cornerstone of Chinese civilization, its leaves spinning into the silk that connected empires. And it has been the resilient muse for Vincent van Gogh, its tenacious life a symbol of hope in the face of despair.
The mulberry tree is far more than just a plant. It is a living artifact, a landmark that connects us to our most foundational stories about love, faith, creativity, and survival. It reminds us that the natural world is not just a backdrop for our lives; it is intricately woven into the fabric of our history and our hearts. The tree stands as a powerful testament to how nature becomes intertwined with human narrative, forever reflecting our greatest triumphs and our deepest sorrows. It teaches us that if we take the time to look closely, even the most common things in the world around us can hold the most extraordinary meanings.