Mulberry leaf
The leaf of the white mulberry, the tree that feeds silkworms, brewed across East Asia as a mild green infusion. Sericulture planted it across China, Korea and Japan in enormous quantity, and the drinking use follows the silk industry’s geography exactly.
Identity
- Botanical name
- Morus alba
- Family
- Moraceae
- Part used
- Leaf
- Origin
- Central and northern China
- Drunk in
- Zhejiang, Korea, Japan, Thailand
Character
Mild, green and slightly savoury, quite close to a light bancha without the astringency. Steamed material tastes markedly more marine than pan-fired.
Notes: green bean, hay, seaweed
History
Mulberry planting is inseparable from Chinese sericulture and spread along with it to Korea, Japan and eventually the Mediterranean. The collapse of silk production in many of those regions left mature mulberry plantations behind, and the leaf trade is partly what those trees are used for now.
How it is drunk
Drunk in China, Korea and Japan, where kuwa-cha is a regional speciality of the old silk districts. Young leaves are also eaten as a vegetable in parts of Japan and Korea.
Production
Young leaves are picked in spring, steamed or pan-fired to stop them browning, then rolled and dried — a process borrowed directly from green tea manufacture and producing a similar-looking product.
Preparation
Infusion
Herbal infusion (tisane)
1–2 g/100 ml · 80–85 °C · 3 min
Category-typical practice rather than a measurement for this specific botanical. Most infusions are far more tolerant of a long steep than tea is.
What gets confused
Black mulberry and paper mulberry are different species and both turn up under the name. Processing method matters more than most labels admit — steamed and pan-fired leaf are different drinks.
Common mistakes
- Boiling water, which brings out a stewed vegetable note the leaf does not otherwise have.
Related botanicals
- Nettle — Dark green leaf infusions that taste of vegetable rather than flower, with real body and a mineral edge.
- Bamboo leaf — Clean, mild East Asian green leaf drinks, both closer to a light bancha than to anything floral.
- Persimmon leaf — Steamed leaf from fruit trees, processed like green tea and tasting like a mild one.
Comparisons
- Nettle vs mulberry leaf — Two dark green leaf infusions that taste of vegetable rather than flower. Nettle is a northern European spring gathering; mulberry leaf comes off the silk industry’s plantations and is processed like green tea.
- Bamboo leaf vs mulberry leaf — Two clean, mild East Asian green leaf drinks, both closer to a light bancha than to anything floral. One is a woodland grass that is not actually bamboo, and the other is the silkworm’s food.
- Mulberry leaf vs persimmon leaf — Two East Asian orchard and plantation leaves, both steamed like a green tea, both by-products of growing something else entirely.
Evidence for this page
The botanical name, family and distribution above are checked against an external authority. Morus alba L. — GRIN-Global Taxonomy record— retrieved and read, not countersigned by a named human. That source covers naming and distribution only. Everything else on this page — history, culture, production, flavour, preparation and buying advice — is TeaHQ’s own synthesis with no external source behind it.
Brewing parameters here are typical practice for the category rather than measurements of this plant, and each set says so.
This page makes no safety claim. It describes what Mulberry leaf is, where it comes from and how it is prepared — not what it does to a person. The absence of a safety note here is not a statement that the plant is safe. How TeaHQ handles this.