The above looks like a Rubra to me @Fusion_power similar to yours. I have never seen a heavily lobed pure rubra female. I do see many heavily lobed albas with a slight leaf tip. The leaf shape between rubra and alba and the serrations are totally different. Some Rubras are more Rubra than others for sure. The hybrid i posted above is Clarks mulberry
I see very pronounced alba leaves usually in the spring giving way to rubra this time of year. Notice that occasional sharp rubra leaf. It looks pure alba almost there
Hybrid vigor? Interesting question. I do not see improved growth or faster growth as such in hybrids. What I see is healthier growth and better resilience for living in a difficult environment. I also see some of the best traits from both alba and rubra in hybrids. Hybrids are likely to be more productive, have improved fruit flavor, and increased fruit size. I can see many advantages to growing hybrids.
I just found a little mulberry tree with huge leaves beside the road hanging over a guardrail. The leaves are really rough on top like sand paper. I don’t really go down the rabbit hole of pure Rubra or Alba I just kinda consider them all as hybrids but I do prefer the flavor of hybrids that show more Rubra characteristics. I’m flagging this tree to see if it fruits next year.
Most named hybrids are extremely vigorous. That could be due to selection bias, but I would predict that interspecific hybrids are more vigorous overall than pure species.
@39thparallel leaves on his illinois everbearing are that big @Fishinjunky.
Im curious if we can drastically improve mulberry. I think we can. They look identical @Fishinjunky . This is what i was saying about alba /rubra hybrids. Hybrid vigor is a thing. This is what i mean about lobes
Perhaps I’ve forgotten what your point is about lobes, but the tree in those pictures looks like a straight alba. Nothing about it suggests aeven the slightest hint of rubra introgression.
Concerning this:
I’m not so sure this is true, especially in the south where silk rearing wasn’t attempted & the two species flower (at least mostly) out of sync. Preliminary genetic testing has shown a clear & distinguishable difference between rubra & alba. I’m starting to think you’ve just never seen a real rubra @clarkinks
Compare your pics of a lobed (alba) seedling to my pic of a grafted, lobed rubra & you can see the leaf surface, serrations, shape, texture, & size are completely different.
Most “professionals” outside the southeast don’t know the difference between rubra & alba. I’ve tracked down two “champion rubras” in my home state of VA & they both turned out to be alba. Their confusion, of course, adds to the confusion of laypeople like us.
I just read that just a few years ago some university professors in the Midwest, upon seeing a true red mulberry for the first time, tried to claim it as a species new to science!
This is what juvenile M. rubra leaves look like. The lobes are very distinctive. These pop up in my yard occasionally. I have yet to get anything to graft on them. I even tried T-budding another rubra this spring. I thought it succeeded at first, but the green buds failed to grow and died a few weeks later. I would not recommend them as rootstock.
I just finished planting 4 more illinois everbearing plugs. How is everyone else doing on the project? Everyone getting some in the ground? I now have 160 mulberry in the ground at one of my properties. The rubras i grow are not pure rubra. The ones i ordered supposedly are rubras. Anyone have more than 160 planted out. Dont be an armchair expert i see this to much with fruit growing. If your local and want to stop by and talk grown mulberry most of mine are producing. One thing i like about @Fusion_power is he is out there with the shovel planting and blades grafting. He really increased his pear collection this year. The true experts put in the time and sweat a bit as that is what it takes.
If I cleaned up around all the trees in the edge of my yard, I’d have 3 or 4 hundred pure rubra trees. Most are small with only a few large enough to produce fruit.
None so far are worth propagating. All are typical rubra with 1/2 inch to 3/4 inch fruit about 5/16 inch diameter. Flavor is good but nothing else is better than average.
Let’s let things cool down a bit. It is around 100 degrees. Most things look cooked when they arrive right now. Thank you for the kind offer. Im going to make crosses with this one again soon Clark's Mulberry
