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Plant Species of the genus Broussonetia
Information about this genus
Name: Broussonetia
Cultivation: CULTIVATION: Only the more cold-hardy species from East Asia are known in cultivation. Although moderately frost tolerant, they prefer a climate with a hot, humid summer such as that of the eastern USA. They adapt also to much warmer climates in the tropics and subtropics, and to inner-urban pollution. Heavy pruning or lopping is followed by vigorous resprouting. Propagation is readily effected by cuttings of short shoots taken in summer with a heel (the best means if a particular sex is desired), or seed can be used if obtainable.
Description: Closely related to mulberry (Morus), Broussonetia consists of 8 species of deciduous trees and shrubs with milky sap, all from tropical and eastern Asia, apart from one species endemic to Madagascar. Like mulberries they have broad, more or less heart-shaped leaves with toothed edges and often deeply lobed as well?lobed and unlobed leaves are frequently present on the same plant. Small male and female flowers are borne on separate trees as the new leaves unfold, the males in long catkins, the females in globular heads. Broussonetia species are wind-pollinated and the anthers of male flowers expel their pollen explosively, visible as tiny spurts of white dust emitted randomly along the catkins. The fleshy fruits are small but, again as in mulberries, aggregated on the fruiting head, which in Broussonetia is globular. Although not often grown as ornamentals they have a variety of uses, notably the fiber from the inner bark being used for making paper and cloth.
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