@hobilus - I suspected that ‘Corral’ and its unnamed cohort, planted across the barnyard alley from it, were seedlings of IE, but only because it/they popped up in my blueberries, about 100 ft from the two 30-yr old IE trees. But… others who know better than I, claim that IE is a triploid, and should therefore be unlikely to produce viable seed. I plead total ignorance to the effects of ploidy on crossing/fertility/seed viability.
That said, I have not attempted to extract seed and grow seedlings from any mulberry (though I’m currently collecting M.rubra fruits for a friend).
One thought that I will advance… at the present time, everbearing types (IE, Silk Hope, Lawson Dawson, Corral) are producing their second flush of fruit… but none of the ‘male’ mulberries that I have identified around the farm are currently blooming… they bloomed early, so I’d hazard a guess that ‘first-flush’ fruits may have had viable seed, but I’d suspect that seed in any fruits being formed and ripened now will not have viable seed, unless apomixis is a thing in mulberries. YMMV and I may be totally wrong.
Is anyone else growing Varaha?
It seems like a real deal Rubra. It seems to have every single Rubra characteristic I was able to find in numerous searches online.
Does it(Varaha) look to be a pure rubra?
Photos I’ve seen of fruiting habit look more like a hybrid than a typical KY rubra.
My two youngest children have lived in The Highlands area of Louisville, where Blake selected it… There are so many ‘escaped’ M.alba in the area that I’d be surprised to find a pure M.rubra there.
I have a grafted Varaha that I just got from PH last month. It was a pretty small graft and got damaged severely by a critter in the ~12 hour window between planting and caging – very frustrating for me as I have been waiting to get my hands on this cultivar for awhile. Thankfully, it is sprouting back from above the graft and looks like it’s going to recover fine.
I am no expert on mulberry trees, but my impression was that rubras (and a lot of alba/rubra hybrids that have a lot of rubra genetics) couldn’t be rooted from cuttings, while albas are generally easy to root.
This year, I tried to root a few dozen cuttings from Silk Hope, which is a suspected alba/rubra cross. Some were in regular pots, some in heated pots, and a couple I just stuck in the ground outdoors. All were treated with Hormex #8 (0.8% indole-3-butyric acid) rooting powder. All of them leafed out and most of them even started fruiting. However, by the beginning of summer, they each had declined and died. Inspection revealed that none of the cuttings had developed even a wisp of root.
Your success might be evidence that Varaha is not a pure rubra – assuming that it is in fact true that rubras don’t root from cuttings. (I don’t care, though – I’m still stoked to try Varaha and I hope my tiny plant makes it.)
I don’t know much about rubras either and I feel your pain with rooting failure… I’m not sure why I pursue a losing game like rooting mulberries . But I am starting to believe that all mulberries will root under the right conditions. If I remember correctly, we left Varaha in darkness for almost a month before giving it some weak lighting for the leaves that were starting to come out. That method of extended darkness got us good results on other types as well. Maybe the darkness gives the roots a chance to develop before the foliage puts pressure on them to provide? I don’t know. Either way, just happy we got a good Varaha or two out of the season.
If it’s useful, we post our (very unscientific) results here:
Oh wow, I’ve visited your site before but didn’t make the connection with the username. I think it’s safe to say you know a lot more about rooting mulberries than I do.
I obviously know less about distinguishing between Rubra and Rubra Crosses than you.
The leaf pattern on Varaha seemed very close to Rubra to my untrained eyes. Much more so than IE, Silk Hope or any of the other known Rubra crosses.
I have not personally seen the fruit set, only the video that Blake put out on youtube. It looked like Rubra but I could well be wrong.
I’m not quite sure, but does this look like a Morus alba mulberry? It popped up on the edge of the grove a while back and grew extremely fast. (In southern zone 4b on the edge of zone 5.)
That sounds like a reasonable explanation for why IE seed may not be viable for many. The triploid theory seems like a rumor at this point, but who knows. The consensus view from what i gathered is that alba and rubra are both diploid, macroura being tetraploid. Spontaneous doubling may be a possibility, but if the above assumptions are correct then generally we’d expect alba x rubra offspring to be diploid. The only reference i could find to triploid alba involved mutagens and in vitro culture.
it does look very typical for alba- glossy leaves, nearly spherical fruit in clusters. the bark of alba is reminiscent of hickory, which your example is, while rubra bark seems to be more similar to elm or basswood
I’d love for ‘Varaha’ to be a rubra…the fruits displayed on the PH website are longer, and ‘juicier’-looking than most rubras in my part of KY…
I had a very good rubra selection from south AL with berries very similar to those displayed, but not in such close proximity…pretty much one per node.
Single rather than clustered fruits seems to be a reliable rubra feature. Also probably the trait we’d all as soon see gone from a cultivation standpoint.
I have a pretty young graft of your ‘Lawson Dawson’ here. Growing amidst the rest of last years grafts, I thought its rubra-ness pretty noticeable.
. But I am starting to believe that all mulberries will root under the right conditions. If I remember correctly, we left Varaha in darkness for almost a month before giving it some weak lighting for the leaves that were starting to come out. That method of extended darkness got us good results on other types as well. Maybe the darkness gives the roots a chance to develop before the foliage puts pressure on them to provide? I don’t know. Either way, just happy we got a good Varaha or two out of the season.
