Fruiting Mulberry species

Both of the images are stolen from elsewhere. In the Chrome Browser, hold down with your finger or right click on the thumbnail image and select “Search Google for this image”. The first one is blackberry.

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I removed the link-I hadn’t looked very closely while I was eating lunch. Sites from Ukraine can be dicey.

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Sites from the U.S. can be dicey!

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Yes, said to be just alba. At my cottage I have a bunch of rubra’s and most are not good. But one is amazing. Small berries on a big tree. I would love to cross it with an alba! I need pollen

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It’s a 1 in a 1000 shot that you get something “very good” or “excellent”. That’s about about 50 pollinated small M. rubra fruits. The odds are better if the pollen source also carries favorable genetics.

In breeding programs for dioecious fruits, it was historically common to spend 5 generations working on a male. This is sometimes done by back-breeding the same desirable female in every generation, then only selecting male offspring. In Condit’s breeding of Conadria he “bet the farm” using Calimyrna (syn. Sari Lop) every generation. He wanted a non-caducous version of Calimyrna. By many accounts he lost that wager.

The berry breeders in California’s berry industry take a far more exacting approach. They employ geneticists who know their strains down to the last loci. Several of these folks are members at ASHS.

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I agree it’s difficult. I just like breeding things, my dog, I now have his son here. And my plants I have a black raspberry I bred that is primocane fruiting and the largest black raspberry berries I ever saw. I talked about it here. I named it Lynn’s Black
I also wanted to try and make an orange raspberry. I found a professional breeder who helped me. Pete Tallman creater of Niwot Black raspberry. Like you need to scarify seeds in sulfuric acid, or wait two years directly planted. They need 3 months stratification and you have to plant them first. Light is needed to germinate. These are anything but easy. So I crossed Polka with Anne and I got a pink instead of an orange. I call it Irene. It was the best of six plants and the only one that survived actually.
I also have a yellow I call Andrea. And a few more I’m still deciding if I’m going to keep or not? I crossed some blackberries too, still under evaluation.
I want to do a few plum or pluot crosses too. The Drewot!

You make a good point of wanting desirable pollen. You need a reason first. Mine would be to bring the rubra flavor to a larger berry. If my other mulberries ever throw male flowers, ones I like, like Oscar, or many others I’ll try and collect pollen. Otherwise I agree.
I could let the Russian rootstocks grow out, some will be males. But I know little about that plant and would be a waste of time and energy. I probably won’t cross them unless I actually do see male flowers on a desirable mulberry I’m growing.
In the meantime I think I’ll clone the rubra for now.

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I’d buy one of your good tasting rubra grafted on seedling - esp. rubra seedling.

NCGR Davis has these males, at present I know nothing about them.

Plant ID Plant Name Taxonomy
DMOR 57 Chapparal Morus alba (not)
DMOR 38 DMOR 38 Morus macroura
DMOR 30 Downing Morus alba
PI 391394 NA 36742 Morus alba
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Here’s a grafted Silk Hope plus 10 more M. alba seedlings from Burnt Ridge Nursery. :slight_smile:

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Fruit formation on Kukoso from Rolling River Nursery.

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M. rubra seedlings from Cold Stream Farm. One gallon can for size. :slightly_smiling_face:

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I haven’t been here for a while, and just found my hands with the fruits here. I named this accession for now Black Prince like, because I found an Ukrainian video with very similar fruits including the color inside. I took a screenshot from that video. I’ll try to find it and post a link to the video too

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Yes, I think it is Black Prince. I don’t know of any mulberries that look like that. Hopefully I can graft the pieces successfully. Still too cold here for grafting. I stored the scion for now.

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Here’s another variety i need to get :slight_smile: black prince

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Easier for you than us here in the states?

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Maybe, but Ukcraine is not in the EU

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I got it from California. I have two scion. Luckily mulberries are very easy to graft.
I should be able to grow it. If not I’ll beg for more! I have done 7 mulberry grafts, all took. So cool than with say peaches where 60% of the grafts fail. Part of it is I have to hold them so long and peach scion just doesn’t hold up well.

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Hope they are really easy to graft.
I am really curious about the silk hope grafts i did in the beginning of the month. Unfortunately due to the covid quarantine in my country i can not check them so soon. My orchard is 40min away from my home :frowning:

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I have done a lot of grafts and no doubt that helped me.

I use cleft grafts because I like the ugly scar. :slight_smile: I like knowing where the graft is at least for a few years. Often with time they smooth out. Sometime splice or whip and tongue are so clean. I cut one off once while pruning. So I try to use cleft or wedge type graft.
This is on Russian alba rootstock.

I think this is whip graft. A side branch formed and i wanted it to go in that direction, so I cutoff the rest of the scion. On Russian rootstock.

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