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  • From: Lee Reich <lreich@hvc.rr.com>
  • To: North American Fruit Explorers <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [NAFEX] White mulberries vs Morus alba
  • Date: Sun, 3 Oct 2010 19:35:11 -0400

Quoting from Uncommon Fruits for Every Garden . . . 

            Three species of mulberries are grown for their fruits: the white mulberry, the red mulberry, and the black mulberry. There also are wild and deliberate hybrids of the white and the red mulberry. (Red and white mulberries have the same number of chromosomes; the black mulberry has a different number.) In spite of the common names, white, red, and black, do not look at the fruits to identify a mulberry by species. White mulberries, for example, might produce white, lavender, or even black fruits . . . 

            White mulberry (Morus alba) is a variable species. The fruits are generally very sweet but often lack tartness that gives flavor éclat. Fruit size is also variable, with the largest-fruited cultivars---‘Pakistan’, for example---bearing berries over three inches long. The white mulberry can be characterized more by its thin, glossy, light green leaves than by the color of its fruit. White mulberry is the most cold-hardy of the three mulberry species, though cold-hardiness varies from clone to clone. At the extremes, there are those clones damaged at twenty-five degrees Fahrenheit above zero and those unfazed by twenty-five degrees Fahrenheit below zero. White mulberry is the plant that was introduced into America for silkworm fodder but then went on to naturalize and hybridize with the native red mulberry.

            Many clones of white mulberry were selected for their fruit and, because of their cold-hardiness, were grown primarily in the northeastern part of the United States. (Some of these cultivars might also have been infused with a bit of red mulberry “blood.”) The most widely planted, and probably the best, cultivar was ‘New American’, found in Connecticut about 1854. The tree produced large, tasty, glossy black fruits all summer long. ‘Wellington’ is a cultivar offered today whose origin is unknown, but which is very similar to, though slightly less cold-hardy than, ‘New American’. Other white mulberry cultivars include ‘Trowbridge’, ‘Thorburn’, ‘White English’, ‘Stubbs’, and ‘Westbrook’, all of which bear prolific amounts of good-quality fruits, but none of which is worthy of planting in lieu of ‘New American’.

            The silkworm craze of the 1830s was fueled in part by the introduction into America of a botanical variety of white mulberry, Morus alba var. multicaulis, that was supposed to be especially good silkworm fodder. After the “multicaulis craze” subsided, these strong-growing trees remained and spread their progeny. Their leaves are large and dull green; their fruit, black and sweet.

            A few multicaulis plants were selected for their fruits, the best of which was ‘Downing’, originating in New York about 1846. ‘Downing’ trees produced tasty, black fruits but, like other multicaulis plants, proved to be insufficiently cold-hardy in the northeast. ‘New American’ was often sold under the name ‘Downing’.

            The Russian mulberry (Morus alba ‘Tatarica’) is yet another type of white mulberry, an especially cold-hardy type that was introduced into the American West by Mennonites in about 1875. Russian mulberries are diminutive in size of tree, leaf, and fruit. The fruits are black and sweet, but vary from plant to plant. A number of cultivars, such as ‘Ramsey’s White’, ‘White Russian’, ‘Barnes’, and ‘Victoria’, were propagated as fruit trees, though the quality of the fruits was considered poor. One notable Russian mulberry was found in the nursery row of John C. Teas in Missouri in 1883. The original plant just crept along the ground, so when a scion of this plant was grafted high on a straight stem of an upright Russian mulberry, the resultant plant was an attractive weeping mulberry---‘Teas’ Weeping Mulberry’, as the cultivar came to be known. Nonetheless, the main value of the Russian mulberry was as a hedge plant for the rugged climate of the Midwest.

            Red mulberry (Morus rubra) is the largest of the three mulberry species grown for fruit and is native to the eastern United States from New York west to Nebraska, and down to the Gulf coast. The tree has large, sometimes lobed, leaves with blunt teeth. These leaves are rough on their upper surfaces and pubescent underneath. The fruits are usually deep red, almost black, and have a flavor that, in the best clones, almost equals that of the delectable black mulberry.

            Red mulberries were cultivated primarily in the American South. ‘Johnson’, the first mulberry selected for its fruit in America, was a red mulberry, and numerous others followed. ‘Johnson’ fruits were large and black, and had a “rich vinous” flavor. Other good-tasting red mulberry cultivars include ‘Travis’ (from Texas in 1900), ‘Wiseman’, and ‘Cooke’.

            Some of the natural hybrids of red and white mulberries produce notable fruit. ‘Hicks’, a prolific bearer of cloyingly sweet fruits, was widely planted in the South to feed hogs and poultry. ‘Illinois Everbearing’ was found in 1958 and is noted for bearing flavorful, large, nearly seedless fruits throughout the summer. My tree tends to cling to its fruits even when they are ripe, which makes for clean ground underfoot but harder picking, especially from near the ends of branches. Other tasty cultivars are ‘Muddy River’ and ‘Collier’.

            The third mulberry species, the black mulberry (Morus nigra), is a native of western Asia and is the species most cultivated worldwide for its fruit. Long ago, this species found its way to ancient Greece and Rome, and thence to other parts of Europe. As if foreshadowing the discrepancies between common names and fruit colors, the Roman author Ovid, in the first century a.d., recounts in his story of Pyramus and Thisbe that the black mulberry was originally white fruited. The fruit turned dark red as commemoration of the blood of these two lovers, forbidden by their families to marry, whose rendezvous beneath a mulberry tree turned to tragedy. Pyramus, mistaking blood on a fallen veil to be that of Thisbe, plunged his sword into his heart, and then Thisbe, arriving later and realizing what had happened, took the sword and followed him into death.

            The whiteness of the mulberry soon fled
            And ripening, sadden’d in a dusky red.

            Let’s look to the leaves and twigs, rather than the fruits, for identification: black mulberry leaves are rough and often unlobed, like those of red mulberry, but the black mulberry has sturdier twigs with fatter buds. This tree does not grow as large as the other two species, perhaps to thirty feet, and is often a bush unless deliberately trained as a tree. Fruits of M. nigra are large and juicy, with a congenial blend of sweetness and tartness that makes it the best-flavored species of mulberry, in my opinion among the best-flavored of all fruits!


Lee Reich, PhD

Books by Lee Reich:
A Northeast Gardener's Year
The Pruning Book
Weedless Gardening
Uncommon Fruits for Every Garden
Landscaping with Fruit






On Oct 3, 2010, at 3:28 PM, Ernest Plutko wrote:

Different color mulberries means different species of mulberry.  Look
up on Google.  The black mulberries are tasty.  The white mulberries
are yucky.  White mulberries leaves are silkworm food.

---- Original Message ----
From: swim_at_svc@yahoo.com
To: nafex@lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: RE: [NAFEX] White mulberries vs Morus alba
Date: Sun, 3 Oct 2010 12:16:33 -0700 (PDT)

The posts about white mulberries have me confused at this point.  I
thought that the Morus species could produce white, red or dark fruit
and that the fruit color did not dictated what species of Morus you
had.  Yet the posts all seem to assume that if you have fruit that is
white, then you are dealing with M. alba.

Can someone who knows for sure clarify this in the interest of
accuracy?

Thanks

John







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