I’m pretty sure Morus rubra has adaxial trichomes…we have a hurricane thing going on right now, so I’ll check tomorrow. To show how unreliable internet “research studies” can be take a look at this one: “Ethnobotanical and Taxonomic screening of genus Morus for wild edible fruits used by the inhabitants of Lesser Himalayas-Pakistan”. For one, I believe they have abaxial and adaxial mixed up. Also they show trichomes for Morus alba adaxial epidermis, and their alba has longer trichomes than their nigra. Not to mention, their Morus nigra trichome length is 41 um, your Black Beauty’s “average” was 435 um. Go figure!.
stay safe, and hoping that the twister weakens when it hits land… Strange that we have successfully deployed robots and probes to mars and beyond, and have detonated megabombs, but still cannot find ways to dissipate hurricanes, or figure out what causes cancer…
heck even with something as relatively ‘mundane’ as mulberries, there is still so much uncertainty. You just don’t know which is what. Basic unintended clerical errors occur all the time. Either that or could it be that the development of trichomes of their nigras were affected by the local growing conditions? It is hard to tell.
while am veering towards a clerical error, considering your findings 10x that of their findings, i can’t help but give them the benefit of the doubt…
i received some winter delight jujube budwood from a good member of this forum(from humid DFW area), and while he considered it really spiny, when i grafted them to our trees here in bone-dry vegas, the subsequent growth of spines went rogue, reaching ~2" long, something he has never seen in his trees.
perhaps trichomes and their presence/presentation could also be influenced by the environment.
got to hand it to you though, your findings on stomata and nucleoli would be difficult to refute.
lol! and speaking of which, there seems to be this paradox about the uncertainty principle(which apparently also applies to mulberries lol) and the man who formulated it. Heisenberg posits that you can never be too certain about getting accurate findings as you try to describe the most intangible and most complex of phenomena, whilst concurrently publishing and giving talks about reconciling science with his faith.
einstein, on the other hand, says you should be able to describe all of those phenomena with some accuracy, but admits he can never be accurate about his faith, that is, if he has any…
i digress
Well, that is the uncomfortable position I find myself in…I’ve been compelled to create a website that will undoubtedly have many embarrassing errors that will surface in time (in spite of the staggering amount of research hours I’ve spent), but that is the nature of this beast (mulberries). Check out Morus species under the Kew Plant List: Most of the plant name records are only given a “one star” confidence level…You will be hard-pressed to find a genus that has such a low “confidence level”. At any rate, I feel most visitors to the site will find the information useful and/or entertaining.
On another note…I examined microscopically adaxial surfaces of my “certified rubra”, an Illinois Everbearing, and four of my “albas”, and found essentially no difference between them. They all had trichomes (confined mainly to the veins), although the “albas” seemed to lie more flat. I need to get over to Boulware Springs near me to re-examine an impressive stand of old Red Mulberries, which at first, I thought were Paper Mulberries because the leaves felt so pubescent…Perhaps my “certified” Morus rubra isn’t so “cerified”.
My yard looks like a war zone after the hurricane…but my neighborhood fared well, with all fallen trees missing houses and vehicles.
glad your neighborhood was not damaged much. Hope your trees were just shaken, and not stirred…
Here’s one of our noirs with the fig foliage, instead of the typical cordate. This specimen has been growing in part shade, so maybe there was a cause-effect aspect to it.
the rubras and albas are more diverse, so even tougher to tell them apart, especially since they supposedly hybridize.
good thing with nigras is that they are a bit easier to tell apart from albas/rubras/hybrids, just by their foliage and growth habit, considering that they are the best-tasting of berries.
incidentally, whitmanfarms.com offer true nigras(noirs), and sometimes offer them at relatively large sizes.
got mine as 8" sticks ~four years ago, though.
Yes, after my last purchase of “fake nigra” leafed out this past spring and was confirmed with microscopy, I contacted Whitman Farms but was told they wouldn’t be shipping again until November. Brandy, at JustFruitsandExotics, has confirmed to me that they were unsuccessful at keeping Morus nigra healthy here in Florida, but I’m pretty damn stubborn and need to see it for myself.
well, if you’re planning to ‘retire’ from florida, you might want to consider vegas. Housing is dirt-cheap, and so are parcels of dirt, haha. And i know of nurseries selling 8-10 feet tall mature nigra trees.
and more than happy to supply you with all the mulb and juju planting materials/budwood
you could try growing them under glass with a desiccant to dehumidify. BTW, you say you’re going to seattle? It is probably not as humid as fl, but quite sure it is much more muggy than our bone-dry desert. You probably don’t need to see wolfskill if you could visit raintreenursery or burntridge, or even just drive around there. Here’s a webpage about a venerable nigra tree growing in seattle(no less!) since the 50’s
You might want to contact the author and ask for its whereabouts.
Yes…will do. I love Arthur Jacobson’s writings, and have corresponded with him by email a couple times.
I have a confession to make…I was initially swayed by GRIN accessions listing of Gerardi Dwarf when observing your Gerardi leaves. They list it as an alba x nigra hybrid, so I was ignoring what I knew to be true and was looking for examples which fit the case for a nigra hybrid. But after releasing that original image to you (the one on the left), I realized that it is better to stick with what I know is true, than to worry about upsetting someone because they were deceived in their purchase (I believe you thought Gerardi had nigra in it). So, the picture on the right is supported by the majority of the Gerardi microscopic images I took. Polyploidy is common in mulberries (I see it quite frequently among certain cultivars), but when assessing nucleus size you AWAYS LOOK FOR THE SMALLEST NUCLEI. I would love to find a true nigra hybrid, but I am afraid it is an Unicorn. If an alba x nigra hybrid did exist, it’s diameter would be about 82% of the size of nigra’s (14 chromosomes from alba plus 154 chromosomes from nigra equal 168 chromosomes…So the volume of the essentially spherical “hybrid” nucleus would be 168/308 of nigra’s…making the diameter 82% of nigra’s).
Paradoxically, I have been an analytical chemist all my life, and once ~ 30 years ago at 1 AM in the morning, while doing pesticide analytical method development, six of my seven tests came out right-on-the-money, but one was off…After spending a 17 hour day, I so much wanted to falsify that one data point and be done with it. But I didn’t, and the reason for the bad data point was found to become a very significant discovery. So…that incident became my epiphany to be resolute in my career (so what I’m trying to say…It won’t happen again).
Note: The “Average nuclei size” of 9.2 um refers to the polyploid nuclei…the 6.2 um size is more typical of albas and rubras, which have 28 chromosomes. Nigra at 308 chromosomes generally averages about 15 to 17 um in nuclei diameter.
am not sure why it would be upsetting, but i appreciate your thoughtful gesture. Moreover, i think it was somebody else who mentioned the possible cross with nigra, and from what could remember, there was a link from GRIN or some other repository. It was something worthy of consideration but not necessarily believe. And even if it was a hybrid, it wouldn’t accomplish much because nigra berries, to me, are peerless, not just among berries, but also vs conventional deciduous fruits we could grow in north america. *it would be awesome though if it was a hybrid-- if someone could re-cross it with a true nigra and hope the berries attain or even just approximate nigra quality while retain the cold- and humidity tolerance of gerardi/geraldi.[quote=“Livinginawe, post:97, topic:4928, full:true”]
Hopefully you will let me use your lobed Morus nigra pic?
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of course! i have bazillions of photos, just tell me if you need more. Am sure you are aware, but just in case, if you click on the pics posted on this forum, it will give you the option to download the actual picture, and i suppose just about anyone posting pictures here is gracious enough to deem their entries as ‘public domain’
i currently have three nigras(noir, persian, black beauty), gerardis, pakistani, ‘dwarf’ everbearing fake nigra, and had IE, saharanpur, weeping, and other albas with white/pink/reddish/dark fruit had to give away or remove due to rapid-growth vs quality/quantity of fruits.
makes me wish any of the nigras would grow as quickly as most albas.
will be ordering ‘king james’ nigra from whitmanfarms this spring, even though doubtful that it will be faster-growing than the others…
incidentally, i see you are in SC. Quite certain many would be eager to see updates on your future noir/s. You and @Livinginawe are the only ones met in this forum who are taking on the challenge. Surely, any success in your respective regions would automatically be the poster child for other ‘out-of-zoners’.
