Whitman farms has an amazing looking white mulberry variety called el dorado and a pink variety called big pink. I called her and she said generally morus alba are pretty cold hardy but she hasn’t heard back from growers in zone 5. Is anyone growing this variety in colder areas without trouble?
Thanks!
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Bumping because I’m curious about ‘El Dorado’ as well.
Here’s a link to her product page for it:
https://www.whitmanfarms.com/allplants/edible-plants/mulberries/morus-el-dorado/
I noticed it too. There are some other large white fruited varieties too. Grimo has one called Carman. Big fruit is certainly appealing. I like the white fruited varieties, but they get old pretty quick in my experience. The flavor is almost always flat and sickly sweet, though Lucille Whitman’s description mentions that ‘El Dorado’ has “some complexity of flavor”. I have a lavender fruited variety called ‘Paradise’ that is good sized and combines most of the good qualities of white fruited varieties with some juiciness and richer flavor. If there were a really good white variety Id be interested to try it.
Incidentally, what an odd cultivar name for a Hungarian Variety! Whether meant as a riff on the fish or (more likely) the fabled city of gold, it seems an unlikely choice
Aside from her saying it has good fruit size and flavor, I’m drawn to her description of the tree being “a slow grower to maybe 15’.”
yeah, that does look appealing. I acquired ‘Paradise’ from GRIN, who received it from someone in CRFGA. The description given lists it as dwarf, not exceeding 12 ft or so. The first yr I grafted it, the scion put on something like 5 ft of growth with internodes of ~8” or so. Hopefully maybe ‘El Dorado’ lives up to it’s reputation better
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Some dwarf type plants in general still can grow vigorously when young, but quickly slow down as they mature, so I wouldn’t judge your ‘Paradise’ yet. It’s also possible it’s only dwarf when grown on it’s own roots, but not when grafted. An example of this would be ‘Black Madeira’ fig. My own root tree has incredibly tight internode spacing and just tries to pump out fruit (which don’t ripen for me cause they’re too late), but I grafted a branch of it onto ‘Desert King’ and it put on growth with significantly longer internode spacing and zero attempts at setting any fruit.
That said, finding a mulberry that has a dwarfing affect caused by the roots rather than simply from tight internode spacing would be a big deal because then it might actually be effective as a dwarfing rootstock for other vigorous varieties.
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I was just interested to see if anyone had any more feedback on El Dorado - she said it came from Hungary (which is mostly z7)
I have White Ivory from her and it is fine in z5 and our kids love it (super sweet)
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Can’t comment on cold hardiness as I am in California, but El Dorado was the latest of my mulberries to wake from dormancy this year. I did defoliate a bit later around February as it was a new tree and never dropped its leaves.
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I ordered El Dorado from Lucile at Whitman Farms today; we spoke and she said it “is very sweet and tastes like ripe cantaloupe”
So that is a good thing and the berries are huge; she thinks it is hardy for z5 but the only way to know is to grow it here
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Awesome! Good luck with it. I forgot to mention that I had White Ivory too and I find it to be very good. I bought both of them at the same time :D. Glad to hear it survives z5!
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Seems good with cold tolerance so far. I grafted one on to a seedling in ground last year. I didn’t cover it this winter, and we got to 4f. Its only 8in tall, but it seems to have survived the winter, as its buds are developing. We’ll see
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