There have been so many posts lately about mulberries, and about which varieties have the best flavor. I remember a tree from my teenaged years that had the most amazingly delicious mulberries and I’ve always wanted to plant that variety for myself, but I can’t figure out what species, let alone what variety, it might have been. I was wondering if anyone might have any ideas.
The tree was a specimen in a yard, which is why I suspect it was a named variety. It was mature, maybe 25 feet tall, and very large and spreading, and was growing in zone 5 in the US. The fruits were huge, long, dark purple, and had the most exquisite flavor. The taste was intense, sweet but perfectly balanced with sour, and quite a step above the flavor of wild mulberries. I remember thinking at the time that I had never tasted any fruit as good as them. The tree produced so many of them that a whole group of the local kids, myself included, would stand under the tree on summer afternoons and eat until we were completely full. A variety that good must still be out there. Unfortunately, it was cut down by new owners about ten years ago.
How can I find a mulberry like this? I’d like to plant some in the future but most species aren’t hardy in zone 5. Could it have been a cross between black and red mulberries?
Caution: the following is all book knowledge, so caveat emptor.
Your description matches almost perfectly what people say about Pakistan Mulberries. The problem is that they are of questionable hardiness even in zone 6, so unless that yard was very impressively shielded, it seems unlikely.
Given the zone, it pretty much has to be some kind of white/red mulberry (it’s not even clear that nigra can hybridize with the other two). It’s not a very developed fruit, so there are really only a few varieties to consider, and I’m not sure that they’re even all that different. Illinois Everbearing definitely seems to be the most popular, and I’d say that’s your best bet. Otherwise, it may simply have been a very nice seedling. If so, it’s a shame it was lost. Maybe see if you can snoop around the old neighborhood for volunteer trees which may be descended from it.
Only thing I remember about mulberries from my childhood/youth, is that M.rubra(the species common there) makes a good fencepost.
But… my wife had memories similar to those of MfR… sitting in the massive tree in the neighbor’s yard, eating berries with the birds. They waited until she went off to college to cut it down.
I’ve looked all around that neighborhood, and all I ever saw were scraggly M.alba seedlings, many with mostly-flavorless white berries.
Chances are, in zone 5, that the mulberry of your youth was an M.rubraXalba hybrid - like Illinois Everbearing (or Collier, Stearns, David Smith, etc.) , or possibly an M. rubra… and less likely… a really good M.alba.
If you want one again… Illinois Everbearing is great; good sweet/tart balance, bears for 6-8 wks in the summer. I like Stearns a lot. I’ve had rave reviews on David Smith Everbearing, but mine is too young yet. As best I can recall, Collier was pretty good, but I lost it to a storm early on. Wellington is good in some places, but it’s a dog here.
I never encountered a bad M.rubra.
The true Pakistan is not reliably cold hardy even in zone 6.
The tree you describe sounds like IE 。 growing in zone5, huge tree，good size berry，snd good flavor。however，it never bear enough berry for me for the size of the tree
Hello everyone, i’m sorry for taking so long to respond. I’v been swamped with school work.
I had somehow been under the impression that Illinois ever bearing wasn’t a very good variety. How did I get that idea? Once everyone mentioned it, I looked it up, and the pictures actually look very similar to the tree I remember. Very long berries. This is so exciting. I didn’t know that there were other varieties that can grow in zone 5 either! So I am very excited, and i’m going to save up for next spring. Maybe I can let everyone know in ten years if Illinois ever bearing turns out to be a match. Haha! Thank you all so much!
MfR,
Good fruiting mulberry selections are available from a number of sources… Edible Landscaping, Whitman Farms… probably Stark, Burnt Ridge… and others.
And, those of us growing various selections are often glad to share scionwood/budwood with other affectionados. Sometimes it’s a way of ‘hedging our bets’ by distributing germplasm in the event that something happens to ‘ours’… we’ve got a place to go to ‘get it back’ from.