Mulberry
Original title: Amoreira
Describes the black and white mulberries in Madeira, their medicinal and silkworm uses, and a short-lived municipal nursery of white mulberries in Funchal from 1877.
Madeira has Morus nigra (black mulberry), whose sorosis fruits are edible and are used to prepare the mulberry rob employed as a gargle for quinsy, and M. multicaulis (white mulberry), whose leaves serve as food for silkworms. In May 1877 the Funchal Municipal Council (Câmara Municipal do Funchal) granted the Praça da Rainha (today Praça do Marquês de Pombal) for a nursery of white mulberries, and the late Count of Canavial went so far as to establish the nursery there, but it was short-lived. The cultivation of these mulberries is at present utterly abandoned. The black mulberry is widely grown on Porto Santo (‘holy harbour’).
In this article
Time
Years mentioned · 01Place
Places mentioned · 02
- Porto Santo
Island where the black mulberry is widely grown.
An island of the archipelago, settled alongside Madeira and forming one of the three captaincies. It has always constituted a single parish, dedicated to Nossa Senhora da Piedade, whose church was repeatedly sacked. The Elucidário records the Moorish pirate raid of 1617, its own Misericórdia and a rainwater channel built on this drought-prone island.
- Praça do Marquês de Pombal
Funchal. Square granted in 1877 for a white-mulberry nursery.
Square in Funchal, formerly the Praça da Rainha, renamed in November 1910. Part of it was granted in 1877 for a white-mulberry nursery, and the Fontes battery stood to its west. It hosted the Quincentenary fair and agricultural exhibition, infantry honours for the President of the Republic, and the laying of the foundation stone of the Great War memorial.
People
People mentioned · 01-
Nobleman who set up the short-lived white-mulberry nursery on the Praça da Rainha in Funchal.