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IN THE right hands, book series can be very satisfying. Reaktion Books has developed several over recent years. One of these is a delightful series called Botanical that aims to integrate the social, biological and historical contexts of a plant, tree or flower. It has provided excellent treatments of the yew, snowdrop, oak and primrose among some two dozen more. Chrysanthemum and Berries will appear later this year.

Right now though, in Mulberry by Peter Coles, we have a splendid account of one of the world鈥檚 most celebrated trees, one that shows the events, people, historical twists and turns, and biological peculiarities that moulded today鈥檚 species. Given the mulberry鈥檚 long association with silk 鈥� silkworms will only eat the leaves of the mulberry 鈥� Coles has a huge amount of material to draw on. A less able author might have pitched things too broadly, providing a shallow skim across the history of silk production, or gone to the other extreme, stuffing the book with stats on 18th-century embroidered silk ribbons.

Instead, Coles satisfies a number of audiences. For the historically minded, there are the origins of silk cultivation in India and China, and the various attempts 鈥� successful and otherwise 鈥� to introduce silkworms and their food plant to northern Europe. Those with an economic focus will like the analysis of how European governments tried penalties, persuasion and payouts to get landowners to plant mulberries (importing silk was expensive), while discussions of the members of the genus Morus should please those with a botanical bent.

There is plenty of local history too, from the obviously well-travelled Coles. We learn how large parts of central Paris once sported mulberries, about the effect of the Lebanese silk industry on local agriculture, and the rise of the Cheney Bros silk empire in Connecticut. For UK readers, there is an invitation to spot ancient mulberry trees across London and the south-east, the remnants of royal attempts to breed silkworms.

Then there are wonderful oddities. Coles cites a master builder of wooden carousels as a source of information about the care of silk moth eggs in Greece, and explains how the Chinese grew mulberry trees on the banks between fish ponds, using fish faeces as fertiliser and tree leaves as fish food. And he tells us about the bloody symbolism of the black mulberry鈥檚 juice-rich berries: from the legend of Pyramus and Thisbe in Ovid鈥檚 Latin narrative poem Metamorphoses to the Hebrew work 1 Maccabees, the berries are central in legends from Spain to Samarkand and beyond.

Not content with this, Coles explores the role of mulberry trees in everything from musical instruments, such as the Afghan rubab, to the production of the oldest banknotes and the uniquely lustred wood shimakuwa. One of the world鈥檚 most expensive, it is derived from densely grained wood from mulberries found only on a small group of Japanese islands.

While mulberry fruits are used in foods and medicines, the leaves, with their powerful toxins inimical to all insects except the silk moth, are now the focus of serious pharmaceutical interest.

All this, and gorgeous mulberry-inspired art, is stitched together with elegant prose, quirky observations and a love of history鈥檚 strangeness.

By the end, Coles has made an excellent case for the tree: 鈥淲e often think of the oak or yew as ancient landmark trees, but perhaps the time has come for the humble mulberry, unshackled from its 5000 years of bondage to the silkworm, to take its place alongside them.鈥�