 The edible fruit is dark purple, almost black, when ripe, long, a compound cluster of several small drupes; it is richly flavoured, similar to the red mulberry ("Morus rubra") but unlike the more insipid fruit of the white mulberry ("Morus alba").Black mulberry has long been cultivated for its edible fruit and is planted and often naturalised west across much of Europe, including Ukraine, and east into China.Black ("Morus nigra") mulberries are thought to have originated in the mountainous areas of Mesopotamia and Persia and are now widespread throughout Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, India, Pakistan, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, and Turkey, where the tree and the fruit are known by the Persian-derived names "toot" (mulberry) or "shahtoot" (شاه توت) (king's or "superior" mulberry), or, in Arabic, shajarat tukki.