List of Mulberries (Morus) cataloged by NCGR with links

… in your area.

And whatever worth growing started its’ life from seed!!! Just check Chinese sites: they discovered Dawn Redwood in 1940s, in 2000s America and Europe started to worry that all trees came from seeds of the same tree in 1950s and they need more diverse DNAs, at the same time Chinese already selected at least a dozen varieties of Dawn Redwood: dwarf, weeping, yellow, and etc. Selections made from sowed seeds of course. Absolutely sure, “papa” and “mama” of Illinois Everbearing were just average plants making average babies :slight_smile:

From my experience with cactuses: big mistake to think it will take 5-8 years to find out how “baby” will look like; grafted hybrids start flowering in 6-8 months instead of years. And I suggest to graft Mulberry seedling as soon as possible onto fast-growing variety (such as Morus Alba hybrids - this year I have 5-feet seedling in backyard from absolutely nowhere, less than 1 year old!) - I am going to learn such technique… with cactuses, Myrtillocactus Geometrizans for example, as a rootstock, adult size (3-4 centimetre thick, 30 - 50 cm high) - you can graft on it 3-5 millimetre (!!!) seedling, just few weeks old seedling, and in 6-8 months you can see flowers.

I am originally from Azerbaijan, which was former Persian province, and it seems all white mulberries I’ve seen in Karabah region were grown from cuttings (they tried to introduce silk manufacturing) and all these tree tasted the same and looked the same (for example, I never seen there in Karabah black-fruiting mulberry) - as a proof it was ‘selection’ introduced by humans.
The same with Morus Nigra at Absheron region: the only wild mulberries I’ve seen were just ‘abandoned’ trees from ‘abandoned’ ancient villages; all were planted by humans. I believe this specific region (north of Iran) doesn’t have any wild Morus Nigras. I remember my relatives tried so many times to propagate Morus Nigra, unsuccessfully, the only tree we had in summer cottage was grafted and we were taking huge care of it during first 6-8 years: daily watering, wrapping with plywoods in Winter, and etc. And it was in a place where rarely we have freezing temps in Winter!

P.S. I am not sure about Iran, I never been there; possibly, they have wild mulberries.
Links:
https://www.azer.com/aiweb/categories/magazine/83_folder/83_articles/83_silk.html

Azerbaijan (population: 6-8 millions people) imported 3.5 millions mulberry
seedlings & 20,000 boxes with silkworms from China in 2018:
https://en.azvision.az/news/97389/azerbaijan-imports-another-batch-of-mulberry-seedlings-from-china.html - it will be disaster! It is 21st century!!! Importing silk warms? From China?!! Ok, China will delegate silk production to Azerbaijan, they are very rich now, they make iPhones!

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Seeds from Asia where wild Morus Nigra grows from seeds like weeds: they can fight with Asian fungi and bacteria. Bring it to North America. Here we have different fungi, different viruses. Seeds will die! Some seeds survive, only those, who can fight with domestic Florida viruses. (perhaps the same seeds which survive in Florida won’t survive in Asia). Nevertheless I still suggest to take extreme precautions and use fungicides, sterilizations, etc. (otherwise all will die)… I was growing American cactuses from seeds in Russia, I know.

P.S. All cuttings and grafts have viruses and other microorganisms in it introduced by those “cuts”; in a best hope it was rootstock from healthy seedling, but we cannot track full history of “selection” (scion). We usually close eyes on such possibility with fruiting trees (peaches, apples, etc.) because we are interested in just fruit and we don’t care if tree will live 30 years or 300 years. For example, we don’t care if rooted cuttings don’t have perfect roots and will never have kind of roots giving them long happy life; seedlings have much better health and potential.

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I disagree. There are many fruit cultivars and hybrids which are unequalled in flavor that you will never grow true-to-type from seed. This is why the recorded history of propagation by cuttings goes back over 6,000 years.

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Some misunderstanding; I agree with you absolutely. I mean “Illinois Everbearing” started from seed; and I also mean that seeds of Illinois Everbearing (if such thing possible) won’t repeat its’ parent. And of course, some cultivars started life as ‘sports’ (and not as ‘seeds’) and who knows, maybe viruses play role here and it is not even “phenotype”

To avoid confusion: I meant new cultivar was born from seed 6,000 years ago

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I just heard Japanese people are very advanced in genetic studies of Mulberry… they say it is possible. Articles are very interesting, I try to research and study (I don’t have formal education in this field):

" Generally, mulberry is a diploid plant with 28 chromosomes (2n=28). However, it is rich in ploidy and a lot of triploid varieties have been found especially among Morus bombysis Koidz. It is said that M. cathayana Hemsl. has tetraploid, pentaploid and hexaploid varieties. Both M. serrata Roxb., indigenous to India, and M. tiliaefolia Makino, originally from Japan and Korea, are known to be hexaploid. M . boninensis Koidz. is a tetraploid being endangered due to cross contamination with M. acidosa Griff. M. nigra L. is dexoploid (2n=308), the largest number of chromosomes among phanerogams."

"In Japan, mulberry breeding started at the government Sericultural Experiment Station in 1916, and two varieties, “Kokuso 13” and “Kokuso 70” were released to farmers in 1922. After that, with the wave of post-war economic recovery planning, three varieties, “Kokuso 20”, “Kokuso 21” and “Kokuso 27” were released in 1949. However, these varieties were not popularized very much, despite their high leaf productivity, because they were rather sensitive to dwarf disease, which causes the most serious growth damage, and of slightly poor quality.

In 1958, a field trial was initiated in four, climatically different, regions (cold, snowy, temperate and warm) and 13 prefecture sericulture experiment stations. In 1971, a dwarf disease resistance test was added to the program. When a selected strain is officially recognized to have excellent characteristics, it is commercially released as a new variety. Up to now, 19 varieties have been released, including “Shinichinose”, “Yukishinogi”, “Minamisakari”, “Shinkenmochi”, “Hayatesakari”, “Aobanezumi”, “Mitsuminami”, and “Senshin”. Such a system is believed to be indispensable to allow the Japan’s breeding network to release a new mulberry variety to farmers."

WOW!!! Over hundred years of experience and we are ignoring it?

http://www.fao.org/ag/aga/agap/frg/mulberry/Papers/HTML/machii2.htm

The author of this report tried to hybridize Morus Nigra from Java (which we Americans call “morus alba”?)
Quote showing the author knows what M. Nigra is: “On the other hand, according to the reports of THOMAS et al. (1942) (cited
from DARLINGTON and WYLIE (1961)), SEKI and OSHIKANE (1960) and TOJYO (1966)
the chromosome number of M. nigra from Persia and Lebanon is 2n=308 (22x) .”
“The chromosome number of M, nigra from Java used in this experiment was
2n = 28 of the diploid in the six clones studied (Fig. 1 and 2).”
https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/kontyushigen1930/48/5/48_5_418/_pdf

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“For example, the hearts of two-year-old children contain 85% diploid and 15% tetraploid nuclei, but by 12 years of age the proportions become approximately equal, and adults examined contained 27% diploid, 71% tetraploid and 2% octaploid nuclei (John,1979)”

" Approximately 50-70% of angiosperms, which include many crop plants, have undergone polyploidy during their evolutionary process (Chen et al., 2007)
https://www.academia.edu/39223164/Polyploidy_in_agriculture_With_special_reference_to_mulberry

And Morus / Moraceae are “angiosperms”; so that quote above means Morus Nigra is evolutionary parent of all other Mulberry varieties?

The Families of Angiosperms - Moraceae

And after reading this, I can say breeding new Morus Nigra cultivar IS POSSIBLE

See Japanese quote above about Morus tetraploid, pentaploid, hexaploid, and other varieties, and this one:
" Bridge crossing
Another breeding strategy that utilizes the reproductive superiority of polyploids is bridge crossing. When sexual incompatibilities between two species are due to ploidy levels, transitional crosses can be carried out followed by chromosome doubling to produce fertile bridge hybrids. This method has been used to breed for superior tall fescue grass (F. arundinacea) from Italian ryegrass (2n=2x=14) and tall fescue (2n=6x=42) by using meadow grass (Fescue pratensis) as a bridge species (Fig.5.7) (Acquaah, 2007)[1]. The same principle has been applied in fixing heterozygosity in hybrids by doubling the chromosomes in the superior progeny (Comai, 2005)[19]."

Hurray!!!

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Yes…I am embarrassed for the author…I wonder if he actually believes that his “Java” Morus niga was actually a Morus nigra. My guess is that he actually had recognized the truth but had to justify the grant money he most likely received. As a lifetime scientist, I was continuously made aware of countless “scientific” publications that were full of blatant errors, misleading observations, and downright data manipulations.

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The GRIN query tool permits searches by native area:
https://npgsweb.ars-grin.gov/gringlobal/taxon/taxonomysearch.aspx

LOL :joy::rofl::joy:

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U.S. National Plant Germplasm System

In 1990, the U.S. Congress authorized establishment of a National Genetic Resources Program (NGRP). It is the NGRP’s responsibility to: acquire, characterize, preserve, document, and distribute to scientists, germplasm of all lifeforms important for food and agricultural production.

Search for Moraceae in Azerbaijan retrieves Ficus only LOL :joy::rofl::joy:

  • Did they really preserve seeds/cuttings of Azerbaijani ficus?
  • Are they focused only on Important For Agriculture subset?

And WOW!!! They have huge list at bottom (quoting Livinginwave) “countless “scientific” publications that were full of blatant errors, misleading observations, and downright data manipulations.”
https://npgsweb.ars-grin.gov/gringlobal/taxonomydetail.aspx?id=24619

“Made for Agriculture” (of the U.S.), not for science. This is what they need to collect and describe, by definition of their main goal: "Nectarines have arisen many times from peach trees, often as bud sports .

P.S. Iran has Morus Nigra, search on Google Images shows, and local store in Toronto sells dried fruits of Morus Nigra. My question was: do they have (at current Iran geographic location) wild mulberries (such as this year’s wild seedlings)? Things such as ecology changes may introduce (for example) viruses etc. so at some point in time specie stops reproducing via seeds (such as M. rubra) Some plants rely on other plants to propagate for instance, or on some fungi, or some hormones coming from other plants

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That is because the only Moraceae specimens from Azerbaijan in the germplasm collection are Ficus. Your search criteria was too narrow.

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Taxon: Morus nigra L.

Distributional Range:

  • Cultivated (widely cult.)
  • Naturalized
    Asia-Temperate
    WESTERN ASIA: Afghanistan, Iran
    MIDDLE ASIA: Kazakhstan
    Asia-Tropical
    INDIAN SUBCONTINENT: India (n.w.), Pakistan
    Europe
    Europe (s.)
  • Other (probably native in s.w. Asia)

Please list the errors in those publications or withdraw your post.

I am sorry that my statement offends you (although my statement is true and honest), but it is not in the scope of this forum to call out all the “scientific” or any other wrongs in this world.

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About above-mentioned scientific paper from Azerbaijan… I am from Azerbaijan: I am Master in Math (from Moscow University), and in 199x I was offered USD $3000 to help manipulate statistical data distributed in 20 years in different small tiny datasets, in medicine field, to someone who was pursuing “doctoral” degree in medicine (higher than PhD). There was no research the way I understand it (blind experiment, and similar). I was told (by boss of their institution) “our doctors know the facts, what helps to patients and what does not, but we need someone who can use buzz-words from statistics”.

And can you imagine where ‘dataset’ comes from? in early 199x? From previously written ‘dissertations’. Not from hospital archives for example. I rejected offer.

Sorry for off-topic…

https://npgsweb.ars-grin.gov/gringlobal/taxonomydetail.aspx?id=24619
This link lists books and URLs, not a scientific papers. Some are good, some not so. For example, it refers Russian database http://www.agroatlas.ru/en/content/related/Morus_nigra/ which refers some other books published in Russia, and which has link called [Object map] which seems very authoritative personally to me (since I am from the same region). Except that QUOTE: ‘Chromosome number: 2n=28.’" :tired_face::tired_face::tired_face: But photograph of Morus Nigra is very authentic, it is not something bought from Alamy photo-selling website for example.

P.S.
Perhaps I’ll create my own “living forms” web database…

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WOW this is interesting: USDA Morus Nigra distribution map (in USA)

If you click link “Data source and documentation” it will list 9 publications which are definitely not typical books sold in retail book store.Button at top-right “Show All” will show more info, with very healthy tree photo definitely taken somewhere in USA. They have two photos with fruits, and I am a little bit unsure it is Morus Nigra…

And another link, deserving my triple-WOW :wink:
ITIS (Integrated Taxonomic Information System)

(and also their (quoting) Disclaimer: ITIS taxonomy is based on the latest scientific consensus available, and is provided as a general reference source for interested parties. However, it is not a legal authority for statutory or regulatory purposes.)

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@Livinginawe, @Bambarbia
I have noticed that Abraham Lincoln wore a beard while in office, while a majority of presidents did not. However, you both fallaciously argue that since Abe had a beard then all presidents have beards while in office.

In my opinion your continued unmerited slander has no place on this site. I recommend you try Facebook instead.

Resigning to the fact that seedlings won’t grow true-to-type, could you speculate on the results? I just germinated a couple dozen seeds (advertised by Trade Winds Fruit as M. nigra). For those seedlings that mature, would you wager a percentage bear palatable fruit?

A soft word turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger…

So true…

100% that live past 3 years.