“Good” mulberries are a dime a dozen. “Great” mulberries are far harder to find. Define this a bit by stipulating that a truly great mulberry should be very productive, have very good flavor, be relatively disease and pest free, and easy to grow. All these traits have correlations with environment where grown.
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| Variety | Taste (Sweetness & Acidity) | Fruiting Period | Vigor Estimate | Berry Size | Popcorn Disease Resistance (Zone 7a) | Prolific (High Yield)? |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Illinois Everbearing | Sweet-tart, rich flavor; moderately acidic | June – September | Vigorous | Medium to large | Low | Prolific |
| Silk Hope | Sweet, mild, blackberry-like; low-acid | July – August | Vigorous | Large | High | Prolific |
| Stearns | Very sweet, rich flavor; low-acid | June – July | Moderately vigorous | Large | Low | Moderate |
| Gerardi Dwarf | Very sweet, intense flavor; low-acid | July – August | Low | Large | High | Moderate |
| Black Beauty | Extremely sweet, jammy; low-acid | July – August | Moderate to vigorous | Large | High | Moderate |
| Lawson Dawson | Sweet and balanced; mild acidity | June – July | Vigorous | Medium to large | Moderate | Prolific |
| Kip Parker | Sweet, complex flavor; low to moderate acidity | July – August | Moderate | Medium to large | High | Prolific |
Based on the table, I’d try to breed the traits from Gerardi Dwarf and Illinois Everbearing. Can someone comment if any of the values are incorrect? Or if maybe one of the listed varieties already is a child of them. I ripped them from a certain AI that shall not be named 
and will edit based on people’s actual reports.
I may not have enough time or land to do the breeding, but if someone does, I’ll graft it happily on my mulberry tree
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Nepal et al’s 2025 article says “M. rubra is listed as an endangered species in Canada & several U.S. states such as Connecticut & Massachusetts, while it is considered threatened in Michigan & Vermont.” That is the context for their use of the word “endangered”.
They don’t address the status of M. rubras in the south-east, & all of their samples from 8 states were from the Midwest.
They also published a supplement to their article that includes pictures of their samples to provide “visual reference for species identification and comparison.”
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Yes. I read the paper when it came out. Are you in the map?
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If I have the paper you reference, it is a detailed breakdown of chloroplast genomes for mulberry species which shows 12 different types specific to rubra. In it, he states that M. rubra is at risk of genetic swamping through hybridization with M. alba. At no point does he suggest rubra is extinct in the wild. He states rubra is endangered and specifically makes that statement with regard to northern tier states.
Why are you so convinced rubra is extinct or nearly extinct, or even at risk in the major native territories where it is endemic? M. rubra is so common here where I live that I simply don’t see the connection. If you want some M. rubra scionwood, just say so and I’ll collect scions from a dozen trees which you can then graft and verify it is pure M. rubra.
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It’s the tenet of his research grant.
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The tenet of his research grant does not make it a verifiable valid fact in all circumstances. Restrict the statement to northern tier states and it may have some validity on which I’m not well enough informed to comment. Extend to all states and specifically the region in which I live and it immediately runs into the problem of a huge population of native rubra trees which are not giving up on living. M. rubra here is almost as bad an invasive as sweetgum. I dig up trees every year from the edge of my yard, in part so I can use them as rootstocks, but also because if I don’t, they try to take over my yard. Birds spread the seed so widely that the rubra population in this region is constantly going up.
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He has demonstrated that some populations in the south have been comprimised and the remainder are at risk.
The survival of our own species is at risk, and yet, we are exceedingly common.
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Yeah the most glaring one is the fruiting period for Illinois everbearing it is later than the others, not June to September, like July through earliest September
Many of the other relative comparisons between them don’t seem right, you’re better off doing the work and searching these terms on the forums instead of just using ai
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@zone7a: I have all of those listed except ‘Black Beauty’ and ‘Gerardi’. Flavor and productivity is good for all of them.
I’ve grown ‘Lawson Dawson’ for over 20 years (ortet is 10 miles from my home). I have never seen Popcorn Disease on the ortet or my 3 clones, while two 30-y.o. IE trees, affected yearly for the past 15-20 years, are growing only a couple hundred feet away from trees here at the house. LD was, perhaps, tops for flavor here this year, but just barely edged others out.
I’ve had ‘Stearns’ for over 15 years; have never seen a single berry infected with PD fungus, though it too, is as close to IE trees as the oldest LD. Large berries with very good flavor. Probably my overall #1 this year, for all criteria combined.
‘Silk Hope’ has long been my favorite for size, flavor, and productivity… have been growing it for nearly 30 years… last year I found a couple of fruits infected with PD. My original SH tree has been battling a severe infestation of mulberry/white peach scale for several years, and is fruiting (and leafing) much more sparingly than in previous years.
‘Kip Parker’ trees are in their third leaf here, first year fruiting. Nice berries, good size and flavor. Too soon to compare productivity.
‘Corral’(#1) is a random seedling… possibly from IE… that popped up in my blueberries, and was moved to provide shade to the cattle working pens, nearly 20 years ago. It has proved to be almost indistinguishable from IE, in berry size, quality and productivity.
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I can’t disagree on this point. Most of the M.rubra trees that I encounter would be considered ‘saplings’ at best, less than 15 ft tall. Even the largest on the farm here - in the woods(former crop fields & property line) - are maybe 6" dbh.
On the farm I grew up on, in east-central AL there were some large, old M.rubra trees that I could not reach all the way around. These were growing on property lines and old field terraces, now in ‘deep woods’ predominated by pines, water oak, and sweetgum, as the farm fields had been abandoned to natural forest succession 30 years, or more, earlier. Fruiting was sparse, due to competition and shading, but fruits were very tasty, and comparable in size and juiciness to any hybrid I’ve grown.
There was a fairly sizeable M.rubra tree in my grandparents’ yard. It was my first encounter with a mulberry… but my only recollection of it (50+ yrs ago) was it being cut into 8-ft lengths which were split into quarters to make long-lasting fenceposts. M.rubra wood is not quite as durable as that of its ‘cousin’, Maclura pomifera (Osage Orange/Bois d’Arc), but red mulberry fenceposts last a long time
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I found a tree growing wild that has fruit that size and was growing suppressed under other trees.
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My impression has always been that it’s mostly a pioneer tree no? It can shoot up to thirty or forty feet in no time, sure. But after fifteen or twenty years the pines and sweetgum are pushing sixty feet and shading out the mulberries. Ten years later the canopy is closed eighty feet up.
A big, old mulberry is like a big, old chinaberry or native plum/crabapple. It can happen, but only in special circumstances, no?
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Valid point, but chinaberry entirely depends on where and how it is growing. Near Selma Alabama, there is a stand of pure chinaberry which has shaded out all competition. The trees are pushing 40 feet tall.
I wonder if there are similar stands of mulberry which have shaded out all others?
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Nothing ever as dramatic as chinaberry stands, but I’ve seen a few old homesites that were predominantly mulberry.
There’s a remarkably tall chinaberry at the JC Raulston in Raleigh. It was measured at a few inches shy of 70 feet a few years ago.
I’ve wondered if it’s just because of site conditions there (great soil, little competition when it was young but over the decades the arboretum’s various plantings have pushed it to grow taller and taller, etc.) or if they imported some seed that came from a different genetic background as all the feral trees in the US. My understanding is most of the chinaberry we have are from the more northern end of their natural distribution. The Australian ones regularly top out over 100 ft tall.
It has incredibly beautiful timber that’s almost something halfway between black cherry and mahogany. Dries easy and is super stable. Very little sapwood, good rot resistance. It’s honestly a pity the ones we got are crooked little scrawny things. It’d probably be our premier timber tree if it grew tall and straight like the Australian ones do. Even the berries are nicer in that population, bigger, more plump, more colorful.
They also have awesome Toona ciliatas down there. The toon tree we get to “enjoy” in the US is the Chinese one, Toona sinensis, which is a short, suckering, clump forming tree. Toona ciliata is a majestic forest tree that grows to 200 ft tall and produces a lovely “cedar” lumber that’s light, moderately soft, super stable, and very rot resistant.
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That was me. Over the past 2-3 years, I have found a lot of mulberries that I have been observing and checking frequently during spring and into the fruiting period. Rubras are very common everywhere in middle TN, but there are also many albas in the older neighborhoods in Nashville. I have also found a small number of hybrids, all female and all probably cultivated (in someone’s yard).
The albas typically start leafing out and blooming in the middle of March until the end of March. The rubra bloom starts around April 20 and into the first week in May, with a peak during the last week of April. There is a gap of 2-3 weeks between the latest albas and the earliest rubras, so it seems very unlikely they will cross directly during a normal spring. The hybrids typically bloom during this gap, but tend to be closer to alba than rubra. However, I have not observed enough to say if this trend is meaningful.
Even in the areas in Nashville, where albas and rubras grow side by side, I have only seen feral trees in the surrounding parks and greenways, that appear to be either alba or rubra, but nothing that looks like a hybrid (so far). I have also never found a single hybrid looking mulberry growing “wild” away from the urban areas. I suspect that if gene flow is occurring between these two species, it must be indirect through intermediate blooming hybrids. In areas where hybrids have become widely naturalized, I would expect a lot more interbreeding, but that doesn’t seem to have happened here, at least in the areas I have been exploring.
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Do you think the academic effort to preserve M. rubra should be abandoned?
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Not at all. The northern populations are very much under threat. With the compressed spring season further north, there should be more overlap in the bloom periods, and a greater threat. Southern populations may be safe for now, but I doubt southern rubra would be the same. The northern populations likely have unique adaptions. We currently have no clue how much genetic diversity could be lost.
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