OT: what mulberry is this?

[greenfig]

Is it possible to ID this mulberry before the fruit is ripe? It seems to be a roundish and possibly white. Btw, when the dark varieties start showing the dark fruit colors?
Thanks!

[Altadena Mara]

Are the leaves consistently heart shaped or are they lobed? If they are heart shaped and the berries double in size and turn black, it’s probably a Black Persian. My Black Persian (M. nigra) is about at that stage. I might actually get fruit this year.
If the leaves are irregular and the berries stay the same size and color, it might be a Black Persian seedling. I have a BP seedling from my original tree with leaves that are similar to the fig tree Silver Lyre and its berries look just like that. They’ve never turned black and, just when you think they should be ripe, strangely disappear, either eaten by birds or dropping off.
The berries are too short to be a Pakistan or Kokuso mulberry. Shangri-La has larger leaves and has finished fruiting in our area. Black Beauty doesn’t fruit at all here, needs 300-500 chill hours and is a smaller bush. (Anyone want a free mulberry bush? 15 gallon size.)
I’ll try to take some pictures tomorrow when it’s daylight.

[greenfig]

Thank you, Mara! Your response covers almost everything . I will wait until they are ripe before an update.
The leaves are consistently heart shaped, it might be a Black Persian as you said.

[Altadena Mara]

I had fun putting this display together. You can see that the Black Persian seedling doesn't look at all like the parent plant. The B.P. berries are still developing but it looks like there will be a crop this year. The touch of acid in the B. P. balancing the sweetness and berry taste give it the best flavor of all the mulberries. The B.P. seedling's fruit don't turn black, stays small and whitish and just disappears before fully ripe. Birds?
There was actually one mulberry on one of the Black Beauty bushes, but you can see it also looks nothing like the pictures you see in the nursery publications. I'm guessing it's the chill requirements that we don't get anymore here.
The Australia is just a white version of the Pakistan and is equally sweet and bland with a furry mouth feel. If you pick the Pakistan (Cooke’s Selection) early, there's a little hint of an acid kick but an equal loss in sweetness.
The Kokusa Korean Mulberry is similarly bland. Shangra-La is a little closer to the Black Persian in taste and is early when few other trees are fruiting. But nothing, for me, can compare with a ripe B.P.

[cjmach1973]

The whites we have in New England turn a light pink when they are ripe. It is a subtle sweetness, not strong, like a strawberry or raspberry, more like a small blackberry

[greenfig]

Mara,

Thank you for a beautiful display! I have never seen them all compared like you did.
I think what I have looks like a Black Persian, of course we need to wait until the harvest time.
I also have rooted 3 other varieties, would be fun to compare.
How large are your trees? How large do the grow?
We have a mature tree that died on a fence line and was considering planting a mulberry. Is it a good idea ? Probably it is going to attract all the critters in the neighborhood but so do my figs when they are riping. Maybe it will work as a distraction.

[Altadena Mara]

The one thing everyone will warn you against is putting a mulberry tree anywhere near where people will walk. The purple berries get stepped on and tracked with purple stains everywhere. You will have to be fanatical about keeping it trimmed away from footpaths or your whole family will hate it (and you). A white mulberry tree like the Australian won’t have that stain problem but won’t taste as good either. Otherwise they make great fruit and shade trees.
Below is a picture of my thirty-six year old grafted Black Persian mulberry tree with a hungry blue jay peeking out from the middle. I'm not sure if the jay is guarding the fruit on the tree or has a nest somewhere. You can see how over the years the top of the graft has grown much too big for the bottom rootstock which barely supports it. It blew over a few years ago, is propped up, and has stayed around the height of the house. A non-grafted tree might get really big and cause more damage if it blows over. Or perhaps it will have sturdy roots and not blow over at all.

[AltaFarm]

The one thing everyone will warn you against is putting a mulberry tree anywhere near where people will walk. The purple berries get stepped on and tracked with purple stains everywhere.

I used to own a tree svc in Brooklyn NY, tons of Mulberry trees. On the attached brownstones the only way to remove backyard trees was taking them through the house. Usually with fruit trees we pruned or removed in the winter. I remember on one occasion (not sure why) taking a fruiting Mulberry through the house, what a mess.

[quackmaster]

Wow, I didn't know that you can root mulberry trees easy like figs. I know of a few around here that grew wild, but one imparticular is very productive with large sweet berries, now I'm gonna have to get some cuttings to try, lol

[greenfig]

The berries are ripe!
Do they look like Black Persian?
Very juicy and delicious. Not just sweet but have acidity.
Raspberries on a tree

[Altadena Mara]

The berry you're holding on the left looks like my Black Beauty, short and roundish. There are two berries left on my tree planted in the ground and neither are ripe. There were a few other berries but they all disappeared. It had a number of bare branches stretching up to over six feet tall, but they didn't leaf out after breaking dormancy -a sign of not enough winter chill. I finally cut them off. It's planted on the south side of the house which gets the most reflected heat in the yard. Anyone who wants to come dig the tree up can have it. I'd much rather put a productive fig tree there.
The berry you're holding on the right looks like my Black Persian, also like hstark's pictures below, rectangular and larger. Mine still are not quite ripe yet. When they're perfectly black, they're at their peak of flavor, rich, complex, sweet with a touch of acid -the most delicious berries around.

[greenfig]

Mara,

Thank you for your comment.
Well, the berries I am holding are from the same tree pictured at the top of the thread, even more, from the same branch. The taste was the same, rich and flavorful but the looks are slightly different. The tree is fully covered, about 20% is ripe.

[hstark]

I didn't know Black Beauty can't grow in SoCal zone 9b. I'm in Central Florida, zone 9b, and I THINK my mom's mulberry is a Black Beauty. Looking at your photos, I'm confused now, her mulberry fruits almost the whole year, and every inch of it is covered with berries year after year except for the new growing tips. Here are pix of her tree and fruit. It's not small, it's over 15' tall and about 15' wide (that house behind it is over 2500 sq ft).

Now I'm wondering about the differences between 9b zones, I thought our climates were the same. The big fruit are about 1 1/2" long. These pix were taken May 19. The tree is about 8 years old, I gave it to her for a birthday gift.

[hstark]

I am trying to root some cuttings, so I don't have any small ones rooted yet. But I have a small tree for my own yard I rooted last year. They root pretty easily, I could send you some cuttings if you'd like to try them there?

Oh, the mulberry are DELICIOUS. They are sweet, but not tart unless you eat the red ones.

[Altadena Mara]

It's not that Black Beauty won't grow here. It just doesn't fruit reliably, at least for me. My tree in the ground is in one of the hottest parts of the yard, summer and winter. I've had some luck fruiting low chill fruit trees here before by growing them in pots and putting them on their side in the winter in the coldest part of the yard in the far back. Each part of the yard has its own micro-climate. The coldest air sinks closest to the ground and is the slowest to heat up. That's probably why I have a few half sized berries on the lowest branches but none on the upper branches.

[hstark]

Maybe it's age and pruning related? I don't think this one fruited reliably until it was at least 5-6 years old in the ground and about 4" trunk diameter, but there's another factor, pruning. I read that you should NOT prune mulberries. Well I think that only applies to very young trees, at least for this variety. I didn't realize it until it got overgrown and I was forced to prune it to keep it manageable. I drastically pruned the far too overgrown inside older growth to open up the center in the fall, and the following year, every inch of the tree was covered with fruit on the last year's growth. That was an AHA! moment.

Mulberries are closely related to figs I've read, so it may be varietal. I've read that some figs like/need pruning, others don't. This mulberry is not fully deciduous like my big fig, but it does go dormant in the fall anyway (around Oct/Nov), and about 50-60% of the leaves turn brown and fall. When I did not prune it in the fall/winter, it didn't produce much fruit, it puts energy into far too much dense foliage, which then extremely reduces air circulation and you get a lot of what looks like fig rust (but may be a different kind of fungus).

Since I've been reading about figs... I'm now thinking that perhaps all the early fruit are actually brebas. It exploded into fruit in May, with a whole lot of 'main crop' coming on. But pruning in the fall seems to push the tree to form brebas for spring. With the staggering of the ripening, you see every stage of berry on the tree, so it appears 'everbearing'. I think that if you can grow figs, mulberries are much the same. I have 1 rooted cutting in a 20" pot at my yard now, and it's very bushy, but no fruit, and it's about 2 years old.

Oh... one other thing, this is is pretty drought tolerant, so I don't think they like to be wet. That is, the one I have in the container now was dried out to 100% bone bone dry sand when I rooted it (over the dormant season) and forgot about it on my mom's porch over the winter. I watered it when I found it, and it not only survived, it took off like crazy, and is now a 4' tall bush (with no fruit, because it had no 'last year' stems except trunk, lending credence to the breba idea).

[greenfig]

Your tree looks magestic!
For me, mine and yours look different though.
Do you want to try my cuttings?

[hstark]

PM me address, I'm happy to share mulberry cuttings! I have to go prune the darn thing with a ladder anyway, and you only root this year's growth She's got a lot of new growths on top that need to be chopped off. No one can reach the top berries as it is, have to shake the tree, and that's like trying to shake a boulder.

[PawPaw Gene]

Did y'all know that to remove the purple berry stains from your hands you take some of the red one and squish them in your hands and rub the purple stains off.
"gene"

[greenfig]

That's a cool hint, thank you!

[hstark]

Oooh! Will try that!

[Hershell]

Thanks Gene!

[PawPaw Gene]

hstark, I have sent you a private message.
"gene"

[hstark]

Happy to send you some too Gene.

[jmaler]

Hstark, I sent you a PM.
Jerry

[hstark]

got it Jerry.

[hstark]

Quick update... I went and made cuttings this afternoon, because they said we might get heavy rains tomorrow, and I didn't want to go make cuttings in a tropical storm. I am sending cuttings to 3 people... if anyone else wants some, please PM me now, so I can send them all out on Monday.

I have extras I cut in case anyone else wanted some, so please PM me if you would like some Mulberry cuttings (these will grow into TREES, so you do need some yard space).

[PawPaw Gene]

Helen, I pray that all will be safe with the approaching storm. Those things really make me anxious as I live oh so close to the Gulf in South Louisiana.
"gene"

[PawPaw Gene]

Oh and Helen, what is your favorite way to root these. I've had very little success with mulberries.
"gene"

[hstark]

Hi Gene. Didn't you get my PM about it? I rooted mine in sand, but did have loss (didn't know any better at the time). Now that I have read so much about the many different ways to root figs, I figure you guys would root them the way you have the most success with figs. If I were to pick a method, I'd say dip in rooting hormone, and stick in a cup of media, and put a plastic bag over the top. I'm sending each of you fresh green growth, wooded this year growth, and 2nd year growths, to see which roots the best. I had to cut some shorter to fit in the mailers (12" mailers), but should be enough for all of them to make at least 1 good rooted tree, if not loads more. I'm heading for the PO when I go to run my other errands in about 1/2 an hour.

[greenfig]

I rooted a few odd mulberry cuttings this year (for them at a scion exchange) using the same methods as with figs. Actually , the cuttings were in the same bunch all the time.
I found that mulberries need more time to start the roots but much less picky as far as watering goes, they were not afraid of extra moisture and liked more heat and more water. Also, they didn't dry up at all, I think the wood is less soft, and I didn't use any parafilm.
I am not sure what varieties I had (except what was the label they came with), will see in a few months.

[greenfig]

Thanks, Helen, for shipping the cuttings, it is very nice of you. I will update on my progress.

[hstark]

sounds good. They all went to the PO earlier when I ran errands, but the PO didn't update tracking yet when I checked. Our PO is always slow at updating, but generally pretty fast at shipping out. It should update sometime tonite.

[Altadena Mara]

My Persian mulberries are finally ripe, but smaller and some are dropping before ripening. The heat wave we had a few weeks back not only devastated the California avocado crop but affected the Persian mulberries as well, according to this article:
http://www.latimes.com/food/dailydis...nap-story.html

[greenfig]

Yes, that was a bummer heat wave. Many of my mature tree are sropping the leaves, figs and non.

[hstark]

I thought California got hot too? It's HOT and humid here... like 90% humidity and 95 degrees in the shade. Has anyone's cuttings rooted yet? The cuttings I rooted at the same time are sprouting green at the top, but I can't see any roots yet at the sides of the bottles...

[jmaler]

I stuck mine in a 5 gal bucket out under my fig tree. All showed signs of growth early on but now a few have dried up. I'll continue to monitor them and care for them. Next spring the survivors will be separated and repotted or if large enough they go inground.

Thanks for the cuttings, hstark.