good luck, will be waiting for updates!
Two of my LE Cooke grafted Morus nigras woke up this week!!! Yay!!!
nice! keep everyone posted here 
A third one of my Morus nigras woke up! I also tried a Morus nigra graft on a dwarf everbearing rootstock. So far so good. I will keep my fingers crossed…
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congrats on your babies!
I have posted elsewhere about my Morus nigra, but this seems like a better place. Mine is from seed, it will be 3rd leaf this year. Buds are starting to break. Tonight the low is 29F so I’m going to bring it in, my figs have to tough it out!
Here it is right now, 3rd leaf seedling in zone 5b/6a. In container, protected in garage for the winter. Lowest temp in the garage is 25F.
Buds broke and took a frost or two.
It seems I get the most growth in the spring. It needs sprays to stop leaf problems here.
It has only fig type leaves so far. From May 12th last year. Rapidly growing at that time.
June 12th, still growing well
No fruit yet. I’ll give another report if it fruits. It could be male?
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What a difference a seed makes! I have a 2nd seedling, also 3rd leaf, but refuses to grow. Should I try extreme pruning?
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Just when was complaining about my grafted nigras growing slow, seeing your seedling acting like an old bonsai-- even on its own taproot --made me feel like a whiner! Evidently being polychromosomal produces unique cultivars grown from seed
Incidentally, ihope the other more vigorous nigra you grew from seed will be a she. My grafted noir started bearing fig-like foliage, but lost the trait as it got older. It ‘came out’ as a she several yrs ago
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I wouldnt even know what to do with it other than taking budwood and graft to a sappy vigorous alba
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The small one has spade leaves, or did last year. It looks alive, the central leader well sort of central leader may be dead, but the lateal branches look alive to me. So small, I never checked.
Ha! I was thinking of grafting. This is seed from a tree in zone 6 Bulgaria. It’s the only nigra in the zone. The tree is at least 100 years old. It produced male flowers and seeded itself so the genes were shuffled, but all from the same tree. The tree had a fungal infection and reacted by producing male flowers. I don’t know how the effort to save it is going?
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I would keep it and try to experiment on it if it was me.
It is quite intriguing, the mulberry-nerd that i am lol
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Sure has a nigra structure and buds. Keep up the good work!!!
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it begs the question-- is it still a nigra? While it has strong nigra characteristics with solid nigra provenance, the pronounced runty growth and dark buds do make me think it still is a nigra, but the extremely short internodes remind me of gerardi. If it bears nigra quality berries, then we can probably lump it into the nigra species as a totally different cultivar. Was also wondering how many chromosome pairs it has… My noirs, black beauty, and persian have the same growth patterns and growth rates (other than noir developing fig-like foliage as a younger graft) as the other ‘normal’ nigra seedlings @Drew51 is growing
but the runty one–it isn’t just a unique cultivar for being born and raised in usa, but it figures to be a most desirable cultivar if it produces nigra-quality berries.
why? well, because berries are borne on nodes, and the shorter the internodes, the more berries you’d have per unit length of stem. Desirable for people who have small yards, and obliged to grow true dwarfs without having to worry about loss of production simply because the nodes are too close together.
Short internodes are also have more character and neater in appearance imo. Now, if this litany of mine don’t convince @Drew51 in giving the runt a reprieve, will send a prepaid fedex box so can ship that runt my way lol
i see @Drew51 is in michigan. Crazy enough that nigra from seeds are being grown there, but a radically new nigra to be ‘created’ far from the nigra’s preferred zones is just bonkers.
i christen it “michigan mini” or “michigan weeny” 
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A user here sent me seeds from Bulgaria. He grew some out too, posts in this very thread.
The mother tree
If you run this through Google translate you can read it. Not much there. A 2nd article about the mother tree is down now. It was a better article, too bad! Language is Bulgarian.
Most of the photos were taken down but I saved them. I can’t find them at the moment.
Here is a photo of the seedlings when first germinated.
Wow I forgot it did have spade leaves at first.
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on same yr of grafting, leaves will be heart or spade-shaped, but after a year or two, noir may, for some reason, have fig-like foliage. Then as an older plant, the spade-shape resumes.
it could be weather related, but really don’t know why it has to go through that process. I used to grow jackfruit, its tropical cousin, and seedlings start and end like that as well.
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I translated some info I have on the mother tree of my seedling it has an interesting history.
The translation is far from perfect. The people of this area feel this tree has special medicinal properties. I cut that part out of this excerpt from an old article on the tree in the Bulgarian media. Thye believe they have saved the tree in this article.
“The 110-year-old mulberry tree in Vratsa is alive!
correspondence of Eva Carali
Vratsa has its own botanical symbol and this is an interesting tree of mulberry species. The plant is over 110-year-old Tsarigradska mulberry, known as Stambolski Dud or Black mulberry. In spite of the great frosts and the fallen snow, the tree is alive and healthy, and will continue to delight vrachan and guests of the city with their curative fruits and their quirky form. The Stambol Dud provokes the interest of all, not only because it is a century-old tree and is protected by law, but because it is extremely difficult to capture and its fruits are endlessly beneficial to human health.
The tree in Vratsa grows in a private property near the Youth House. Nobody knows when and who exactly planted it there. More than 35 years ago the place where the mulberry tree grew was a yard with a small house. The owners, however, cleared the terrain and decided to raise a block of flats. When it came to the city, the whole public jumped to protect the valuable tree from possible destruction. Builders were forced to preserve it by building the block so that the roots of the tree and part of the trunk remain inside the building, and the rest of it through a special hole has grown outward. That’s why the Stambolian coat looks like it has now emerged from the basement of the co-operative.
In the summer of 2011, the blackberry died a lot, infested by a bad fungal disease. Ecologists and botanists were then alerted by tree owners and awake public figures. It was necessary to collect an emergency team of experts from RIEW, Plant Protection in Vratsa, Vratsa Municipality and State Forest Protection Station in Sofia. The municipality paid money, and Vladimir Vladimirov, chief expert at the Forest Protection Station - Sofia entered the role of the Savior. Thanks to the common efforts, the tree heals.
However, the observation on it is alert and continues even now. His illness in summer has been described as cancer in humans, but colds and snow are dangerous to him. Specimens of this species of mulberry tree in Bulgaria are rare. But, we can be calm - the Stambol dud is alive and well!”
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I found one photo of the tree, well two one is still in the article.
I did a little pruning on the bonsai to try and force growth. the central leader was dead, but the side shoots are alive. See what happens? The big one looks great and I expect another year of decent growth. Eventually I will graft a piece unto rootstock (which I have already). Maybe next year. Leave it out all winter and see how it does. My zone is slightly colder than Bulgaria (zone 6b) I’m in zone 6a/5b. I may protect it for a few years till it is bigger before leaving out.
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wish i could transport that tree to las vegas…
and do keep us posted on your uber-dwarf nigra
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