Male Mulberry?

Well I have a pak i rooted from a cutting kept in a container. It should fruit this year. Other mulberries I rooted or grafted usually fruited in the third year. But most of those are the cold hardy types. It is not as big as Vinod’s tree. These paks are more a tropical strain and may take longer? I protect mine in the winter. It’s sound asleep right now.
I do know mulberries grown from seed can take a lot longer. I doubt this is the case. I mention it as I have a nigra from seed going on 5th leaf. No fruit yet. I have to check my photos of it when it first sprouted to confirm age. I don’t really remember? I have hundreds of fruiting plants. Hard to remember all of them.
Anyway it will be interesting to compare.

in our locale(las vegas), paks drop their foliage really late in autumn(sometimes will still have leaves up to xmas even with 32F or lower temps), and leaf out the earliest, often around mid feb. It seems to be the earliest to leaf out of all mulbs. I see you’re in MI, so totally different conditions. It will deserve an article on your sunday paper’s gardening page once you get them to fruit(both pak and nigra) :slight_smile:

LOL! Well only plant nerds will go through the loops I do. I would not suggest these to most in my area. Chills a user here lives near me and he has fruited nigra.
I will experiment in ground, I have two Paks, so one is going in ground. I’m going to make an air layer on the nigra and also put that in the ground.
Since figs are in the same family as mulberry (Moraceae), I thought the garage in winter, like my figs will work. I get figs by the hundreds. And since members here have fruited Pak mulberries in containers, I was confident it can be done. As it was, so I won’t be the first.
I can fruit any plant, the question is, “is it worth it?” Most of the time it’s no! :slight_smile:
I love to zone push, well I like to learn about growing plant species. I will always have to add new ones, as learning how to grow new plant species is fun for me. Sometimes once I conquer them, I sometimes get bored and move on. Orchids were like that. I like all plants, not just fruit. Recently looking at Peony. I added one, and want to add a tree Peony too. Sold out on me! You must plant these in the fall.

This will be surprising if it is true. I pruned my Pakistan Mulberry quite hard in my previous house. It fruited every year. The reason I’m pruning it harder here is that my previous tree broke a big branch when it was loaded with fruit.

A bit off topic, but I figured I’d post it here.

I have a male wild white mulberry. I’ve read that mulberries can “switch” sexes. I’d prefer to have a wild white mulberry that produces fruit rather than a grafted variety, but if my tree stays a male it really serves no purpose.
Graft it over or wait and see?

Fingers crossed :crossed_fingers: It gets full sun all day long.

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You’re right, i guess i got sidetracked not having mentioned Chills! If remember it right @Chills has a M. nigra in potted condition for many years in MI :+1:

have to say it is worth the bragging rights. I admit i’d be bragging too if i managed to get those to fruit there, haha. But on a more serious note, data/ observations posted by extreme zone-pushers aren’t just insightful to hobbyists, but also to anyone doing research on zone-pushing. Nigra’s especially, being rather sluggish in growth, may take a long time to “do something” even with seasoned wood grafted to a mature healthy alba and grown in vegas conditions. The dept of agriculture might have a hypothetical grant of billion $ to research on nigras(considering that nigras are 20$/lb, it at all available commercially) for out of zone areas, but no amount of money can speed up the process of gathering data if their researchers were to start just now. For them to have any results they’d have to wait as long as you and Chills did, so your findings are a reference point that they could refer to. One instance when money won’t buy time, since the species doesn’t care if they are grown by bezos or sponsored by the us government. M. nigra’s will develop in their own terms and all we could do is to try everygthing to get them in the mood, lol

am curious about this. Did you obtain your previous pak as an already fruiting tree? If it wasn’t yet fruiting when you obtained it, i have serious qualms about pruning it hard to accelerate maturity.

I have never heard of the mulberry tree switching sexes. Where did you read this, it is new to me?

No, as a bare root Dave Wilson. It gave one solitary fruit the same year.

I have heard this is true too. I’m fairly positive this is correct info. Although I have no reference but probably could find it. I know they can produce both too. I have a seedling of a nigra and the closet nigra to it is hundreds of miles. The tree has pushed into zone 6 by itself. It may be a rare mutation in this tree to produce hardiness. Usually means a change in it’s anti-freeze properties on the molecular level.

Some reference I found with a simple search on duck duck go.

https://www.hunker.com/13429121/how-to-tell-if-a-mulberry-tree-is-male-or-female

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i see now, so yes, pruning shouldn’t delay or postpone peak production if already bearing when you obtained it.
ours were obtained as sticks less than a foot tall, if remember that right, and took a while to fruit. Our M. nigra’s actually were more precocious than our pak for the very reason that the nigra’s would at least produce tiny berries(that never matured)

Interesting article on male/female flowers. I have a seedling male tree (morus macroura), I don’t think it has both male and female flowers and it does not change sex. There may be certain varieties that do have both sexes, but none that I grow has it.

Usually they respond to environmental factors. The nigra seedling I have comes from a treasured rare nigra in Bulgaria. The tree developed a fungal infection and knew it was in trouble so started producing male flowers and continued producing female flowers. My seedling comes from seed of this tree. The tree was cared for by the best in the country. It has recovered. At least 100 years old.

Some articles about the tree are still online. Ran through google translate, so wait a second for language change (Bulgarian to English). An interesting quote from the article " A small tree has been growing near the 110-year-old tree for three years, caught not by the will of the people, but by the will of God!"

Cool photo of the tree with leaves. Their were others, now removed from the net. I saved them somewhere?

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Drew, very interesting article and it sure is huge tree. It looks like your seedling tree is still not that old so you probably did not get any fruits yet. I have a Persian mulberry that I grafted and it grew about 10ft in one year, I hope to get some fruits this year so I can taste it. If you want to trade for a few cuttings of your special mulberry let me know. I have many varieties, some that is not available yet in USA. My wild seedling tree that grew in my backyard is over 20ft tall and it always has flowers (male) but I use the rooted cuttings for my rootstock to graft my many varieties.



I have seen mulberry change sexes from storm damage . Only 1 limb changed . Also 1 changed after a large limb was removed . I have wild trees with both sexes also .

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Ok, that is very interesting. I doubt mine will change but will keep an eye open for it.