Drew, I’m happy you have this plant. When the time approaches for testing, I’ll send you a sample kit for a leaf sample. I’m thinking it will be a year from now.
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Fantastic. I need a year anyway. Make sure I have a female. Just curious if it differs from other nigra? It may not show any difference? I’m hoping we have some diversity.
Recently I found some other unusual mulberries. I picked up thanks to Brady one scion of Australian Green Mulberry. I plan to graft, it’s rather small. Hope it takes? I know nothing about it? i have a Russian alba rootstock. I also have lines on other unique mulberries, see if I can score others.
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Male or female leaf samples work for me. I’m very curious what this fig-leafed mulberry turns out to be.
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Here’s a bundle of 10 two-yearold seedings labeled Morus alba tatarica that arrived yesterday from Burnt Ridge Nursery. There’s an empty 1-gal pot on the left for scale.
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Ok it looks like Austrailian green is just Pakistan white. Anybody heard of Black Prince?
Ever see a mulberry like this?
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I saw that yesterday- same photos. I looked it up- found a place in Ukraine with it listed. Huge berry- I would be really happy if the fruit tastes good. (link removed- site has grabbed photos of berry from elsewhere)
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I’m concerned about the accuracy of the Ukraine site.
“The plant is not self-fertile.”
“Species: Черный принц” (Black Prince)
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Yeah it’s bad they don’t know that the tree will produce fruit without pollination.
The photos I show might be Black Prince, might not either!
They do look a lot alike though! Wish I could see a cross section of that fruit on the site.
The species thing I could forgive as for this cultivar they usual list like Morus alba ‘Black Prince’ So it is kinda part of the name. Not species but cultivar. Plus the translation could be off.
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From your photos the fruits appear to be elongated M. alba. One could speculate it is a cultivar of M. alba x macroura. Or a Chernobyl induced mutant. 
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I am very suspicious of that site… the first photo doesnt look like a mulberry… looks like a blackberry instead, the 2nd photo yes its a mulberry. Also the price is to cheap for a cultivar
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Both of the images are stolen from elsewhere. In the Chrome Browser, hold down with your finger or right click on the thumbnail image and select “Search Google for this image”. The first one is blackberry.
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I removed the link-I hadn’t looked very closely while I was eating lunch. Sites from Ukraine can be dicey.
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Sites from the U.S. can be dicey!
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Yes, said to be just alba. At my cottage I have a bunch of rubra’s and most are not good. But one is amazing. Small berries on a big tree. I would love to cross it with an alba! I need pollen
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It’s a 1 in a 1000 shot that you get something “very good” or “excellent”. That’s about about 50 pollinated small M. rubra fruits. The odds are better if the pollen source also carries favorable genetics.
In breeding programs for dioecious fruits, it was historically common to spend 5 generations working on a male. This is sometimes done by back-breeding the same desirable female in every generation, then only selecting male offspring. In Condit’s breeding of Conadria he “bet the farm” using Calimyrna (syn. Sari Lop) every generation. He wanted a non-caducous version of Calimyrna. By many accounts he lost that wager.
The berry breeders in California’s berry industry take a far more exacting approach. They employ geneticists who know their strains down to the last loci. Several of these folks are members at ASHS.
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I agree it’s difficult. I just like breeding things, my dog, I now have his son here. And my plants I have a black raspberry I bred that is primocane fruiting and the largest black raspberry berries I ever saw. I talked about it here. I named it Lynn’s Black
I also wanted to try and make an orange raspberry. I found a professional breeder who helped me. Pete Tallman creater of Niwot Black raspberry. Like you need to scarify seeds in sulfuric acid, or wait two years directly planted. They need 3 months stratification and you have to plant them first. Light is needed to germinate. These are anything but easy. So I crossed Polka with Anne and I got a pink instead of an orange. I call it Irene. It was the best of six plants and the only one that survived actually.
I also have a yellow I call Andrea. And a few more I’m still deciding if I’m going to keep or not? I crossed some blackberries too, still under evaluation.
I want to do a few plum or pluot crosses too. The Drewot!
You make a good point of wanting desirable pollen. You need a reason first. Mine would be to bring the rubra flavor to a larger berry. If my other mulberries ever throw male flowers, ones I like, like Oscar, or many others I’ll try and collect pollen. Otherwise I agree.
I could let the Russian rootstocks grow out, some will be males. But I know little about that plant and would be a waste of time and energy. I probably won’t cross them unless I actually do see male flowers on a desirable mulberry I’m growing.
In the meantime I think I’ll clone the rubra for now.
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I’d buy one of your good tasting rubra grafted on seedling - esp. rubra seedling.
NCGR Davis has these males, at present I know nothing about them.
| Plant ID | Plant Name | Taxonomy |
|---|---|---|
| DMOR 57 | Chapparal | Morus alba (not) |
| DMOR 38 | DMOR 38 | Morus macroura |
| DMOR 30 | Downing | Morus alba |
| PI 391394 | NA 36742 | Morus alba |
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