MORA, OF KHAKI FAME

The 30-ft-high tree overarching my living space, called Mora by local folks, is flowering nowadays, dangling slender, yellow, three-inch-long aments, seen below:

The aments consist of hundreds of simplified male flowers, for Mora is dioecious -- the species comes in male and female trees. If you're familiar with mulberry flowers you might see a resemblance between the two species, and that would make sense because they belong to the same family, the Fig Family, or Moraceae.

In fact, in standard Spanish "mora" means mulberry, but this tree doesn't produce the delicious fruits for which I used to compete with birds back during my hermit days in Mississippi. Mora's fruits are so nondescript that most local people say the tree produces no fruit at all. Certainly the male trees don't, but the females produce small globular fruits about half an inch across (1-1.5 cm).

The Mora in the picture is CHLOROPHORA TINCTORIA, and once upon a time this species was much appreciated, not for its small fruits but for its wood. As is the case with North's mulberry wood, Mora woodchips soaked in water produce a yellow dye, and this dye has long been used by the Maya. Certain metals can be added to the soaking water to produce a green dye.

Mora's dyes were most exploited during World War II in the production of the khaki color.