I never have done it before. Maybe I’ll try it? I will read up on budding again. No keep the rootstocks a couple more weeks.
I will need one of them in 2 weeks. Oh Rolling River canceled my Jujube tree order and refunded my money. Well said they would! So I ordered So and Black Sea from OGW I wanted Honey Jar, sold out everywhere. I will add it next year. I think I’m done with RR. They marked it as shipped, and it was not. If I would not have emailed I may have been out 130 bucks.
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Sorry to hear it. One of the rootstocks is pencil thickness, the other is thinner. The thinner one has buds swelling, but no worries…
I could give you scions for Honey Jar if you’re interested. I’d have to go out and cut right away though.
Thanks but I will pass on the scion. I’ll get a tree next year. No worries on the rootstock, i have other rootstock i could use. The Chilean guavas were quite yellow when they arrived. So many plants like this, these small tropical fruits have died on me. They never seemed to adjust. Well I’m glad to say these are becoming greener and greener. They look to be growing, are assimilated to outside already. I have been shuffling them in and out. I up potted yours to 1.5 quart pots from the micro containers. Mostly i was worried about them dying in those micro pots. They will be left outside soon. I think we are done with freezes, but still may get some frosts. They still look a little yellow, but appear to be growing at least! I put mine in a huge pot already. I will baby all of them still. I’ll wait till night temps are above 40 before I leave out.
Here they are a minute ago
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You (and someone else in this forum I’ll need to address) are so right… As I obtained more mulberry seed packages from around the world (over a dozen in all), microscopic examination revealed four more seedlings that displayed that “jigsaw puzzle” pattern on their abaxial leaf cells. Two of the four seem to be ‘Dwarf Everbearing’ seedlings in appearance (bark, growth habit, leaf size, and fruit size), one I can’t locate for retesting, but one that was from Australia has lost that cell pattern and “appears” to be unique (Doesn’t resemble ‘Dwarf Everbearing’). I wish I could have kept my Morus nigra seedlings alive to see if they, too, would lose their juvenile cell pattern as they matured (my guess is “yes”).
Awesome studies you are doing @Livinginawe ! You deserve an honorary degree in botany/agriculture, if you dont have that yet 
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Thanks…but actually it is pure folly. In a few years advances in genetics will expose all the false implications in a flash and make all the time wasted pursuing rather meaningless studies totally obscure…but it’s what we do as humans; not easy to stifle or ignore…always searching beyond our current understanding. But now I am drifting into another category of this forum.
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i don’t remember disagreeing with you, so i guess this is the first time. Because folly it is not!
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I’m a member of Ourfigs. The fig growers have all kinds of challanges to determine if figs are the same or not. more and more heirlooms are known now, but many immagrants brought over figs with no names. Like one of the best,Smith which the Becnel family of Louisiana is credited with bringing this variety into the nursery trade. Where it comes from is unknown? No fig in Europe we have found is like it. It is an awesome fig. So some guys at Ourfigs are paying for genetic testing of as many figs as possible. To understand them better. Seems to me genetic testing would tell us exactly the relationship of these mulberries to each other. Figs and mulberries are closely related too. In the same family if I remember correctly? I guess the DNA testing does not map all of the DNA but only certain alleles or locations. I’m sure the same service could easily do mulberries too.
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I wonder why they named it “Smith” instead of “Becnel”…Smith is so common and ordinary (no offence to the Smith’s out there).
I will ask my acquaintance at the local university who is the editor for an open-source genetics magazine if the time is ripe (she stated a couple years ago that it hadn’t reached a high enough level of sophistication to be very useful). Meanwhile forum member, Richard, plans to do such with mulberries at some future date…perhaps we could collaborate.
Oh well Richard is doing the figs so it’s already set in motion.
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Maybe found on his property but Becnel introduced it? The fig world is filled with these kind of mysteries.
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OK…Is it too late to retract this topic?
Last year I planted two of Chriso’s nigra seedlings out in the yard. As bad as they looked last fall I didn’t expect either to still be alive…but one is still clinging to life. It is 3 years old, so I removed a leaf, expecting it would still be in that juvenile stage with the “jigsaw puzzle” cell pattern. Lo and behold (does anybody still use that expression?), the nigra has lost the pattern and shows a cell pattern typical of grafted nigra cultivars.
So the whole thread was perhaps a study in futility. Well, perhaps not totally…It appears that the “typical” ‘Dwarf Everbearing’ retains that “jigsaw” pattern for some reason, and possibly is indicative of that species or sub-species, as my 3 year old “Australian” seedlings still possess the “jigsaw” pattern,…But I will abandon all speculation and look ahead to genetics for answering my future curiosities.
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One of my own M. nigra seedlings came back to life about a month ago. It must be 4 or 5 by now but only about a foot high. Surprisingly, one branch looks pretty healthy. I will baby it like I did the others. We’ll see what happens…
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I just wanted to make a remark on the occurence of Morus nigra seedlings…
Here in Belgium we have quite a lot of Morus nigras, some are a few hundred years old. The one in my home town even has a circumference of about 2.5 meters (= over 8ft).
This one predominantly has female flowers and produces an abundance of fruit at this time. Other trees will flower 50/50 male and female and one tree I know was flowering only male but suddenly changed sex and turned predominantly female. I also got tel calls from clients that were in panic because their tree didn’t fruit anymore because it started to produce only male catkins and no fruit, so these changed sex in the other direction. Very bizar species…
Anyway, my point is that, at least here,mulberry produces fruit with viable seed in abundance. In addition to that, Morus nigra, like many other mulberries, will also produce apomictic seed. When the seed is collected and sown directly after harvest it germinates without a problem and dried seed which is sown in spring after letting it swell in water for 24hrs also germinates without any problem. However, I have never ever seen a naturally sown Black mulberry!
In Slovakia you can find the largest concentration of MN in Europe. In the little town of Pukanec there are about 900 trees within the town limits and even more on the nearby hill slopes. These are considered to be the only natural stands of Morus nigra in Europe! The trees must be from seed because studies were carried out on the fruit to determine the composition and it turned out that there is a big difference between fruit from different trees.
This brings me back to my remark that I have never ever seen a naturally sown Morus nigra although they should grow easily from seed… I presume that the reason behind this is that the seed is so nutritious that rodents and other creatures have them on top of their food list…
The same goes for Morus alba or rubra…taking into account the number of seeds which is produced by these trees, the landscape should be littered with mulberry trees!
One thing which is very peculiar with Morus nigra seedlings is that they all grow extremely slowly and stunted. The seedlings will look as if they are neglected and old and gnarled even although they are only a few years old. My oldest seedling is now 20 years old and still hasn’t flowered. These seedlings look as if they are close to wilting every time but in spring they turn back to life every time and put on some growth… my 20 year old seedling is only about 200cm tall.
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Thanks for the information on Morus nigra in your country. I have two seedlings 3rd leaf. One is 75 cm the other 5 cm. So it looks like I have a fast grower! The mother tree in Bulgaria does have seedlings under it. Here most cultivars stay female. Probably why they were chosen.
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That is quite remarkable.
Peter Coles of moruslondinium.org has stated the same thing…And he and others associated with the project to document all the Morus nigras around London have undoubtedly spent many hours underneath and around quite a few Morus nigra trees. In their case, I had attributed it to very few male Morus nigras being documented, but as you have pointed out…in some areas (Pukanec) there are natural stands where seed propagation must have taken place…So the mystery continues. It may be something akin to how certain “man cultivated” plants have mostly lost their ability to propagate from seed. Salvia divinorum, a plant that is only found in one region of Mexico, has been propagated by cuttings and natural stem rooting for many centuries by the Mazatec, and the few seed that are produced seem incapable of promoting long-term survival if it wasn’t for the intervention of the Mazatec. Corn is said to be such a plant also…but it is not as mysterious as Salvia divinorum…or Morus nigra.
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This is extremely valuable information. It corroborates my experience with Morus nigra seedlings in the last decade or so. It has become my conviction that perhaps because of the high chromosome count or some other quirk specific to M. nigra, it quite often doesn’t grow well on its own roots, and needs to be grafted onto a stronger root system. That’s why seedlings germinate and struggle for a few years before they succumb. I’m planning on doing just that with the one seedling I have if it manages to hang on until its caliper is of graftable size. Keeping my fingers crossed.
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Indeed the high ploïdity might be the reason that seedlings eventually wither after struggling to survive for years. Many hybrids/seedlings of other species have exactly the same problem. This might also explain why wild self sown Morus nigras are so rare or as good as non existant. I suppose that on the rare occasion when seedlings occur, they die on they on their own I after a few years…
I 'm inclined to believe that actually all Morus nigra sold and grown in the US and Europe under different varietal names is probably one and the same clone. I cannot see much difference in fruit quality and habitus between different varieties… I do notice that my MN seedlings are all like a diminutive form of the original seed parent. Leaves are smaller, tree looks more dwarfish, still waiting for fruit… Maybe age has sth to do with it and after all these years my seedlings are still in the juvenile stage…
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This has been stated by other members in this forum also. I suppose marketing strategies have a role in the nursery business as well as any other business.
I’m not convinced of anything said. I don’t have much experience with nigra but my one seedling is growing quite well. It’s healthy and thriving as far as I can tell. It does not grow fast, yet averaging over a foot a year is fine with me. Many plants are hard to grow, this one not so much as far as I can tell. Mine is progressing just fine. It may not fruit for 20 years, sure, that happens, like hickories take 40 years. I don’t see this plant so far as being difficult to grow. I’m in Michigan after all and it’s growing very well. I suspect it will flower sooner than later, it is in the mulberry family like figs which can fruit the first year. So this family is not known for slow maturing plants. This may be the turtle of the famly, but it is still moving forward. Time will tell. Mine is now throwing spade leaves. First time. The other seedling has only had spade leaves. Reminds me of figs. Often small clones will not throw the same type of leaves. I find my tree to be extremely drought tolerant, so I water it very lightly compared to others. It seems to grow best when slightly dry. I feel my other seedling was over watered and that is the reason for it’s small size. So I cut water down and it doubled in size this year… Both seem like tough trees as the over watering didn’t kill them, just stunted it. You have to get a feel, be observant, to understand how a plant grows. I’m now convinced they do not like a lot of water. It took me three years to figure that out. My first clue was that it remained moist longer than other trees of the same size. Also during the dormant winter one could really tell. It really only needed to be watered once all winter. I would check weight of container, and while all my figs were light the nigras were almost saturated! Don’t over water this plant!
The plant seems to grow only in early spring and shuts down for the long dry summer Hence the slow growth. It must come from an area with hot dry summers.
Reading the literature on this plant it is considered moderately invasive. This is informative, it DOES take a long time to fruit. It IS very drought tolerant.
Summary of Invasiveness
M. nigra, black mulberry, is a slow-growing, deciduous tree. The species is known to have escaped from cultivation in Denmark and Austria, is weedy in Spain, southeastern Australian bushland, and South Africa (Randall, 2012), and has been reported as invasive in southern Brazil (Gasperin and Pizo, 2009). Invasive traits include its longevity, rapid growth rate, tolerance for droughts, infertile and rocky soil, and resistance to cold, easy seed dispersal by biotic vectors attracted to its sweet, edible fruits, and repeated introductions for cultivation around the world. Considering current evidence, risk of introduction for this species is medium to high, although further research is needed.
Reproductive Biology
Some mulberries exist as male or female trees (dioecious), so both will be required in order to produce fruit. Trees will sometimes change sex and do not bear much fruit for the first 15 years. High temperatures, strong light and long days favour maleness in mulberries, with their opposites, as well as high humidity, favouring the production of female flowers. The species is wind pollinated, and some cultivars will set fruit without any pollination, for example in California, USA. The self-fertile trees commonly produce two crops a year (Orwa et al., 2009). Self-fruitful trees are preferred.
Longevity
M. nigra is long-living and can apparently produce fruit for hundreds of years (Orwa et al., 2009). In the 1930s, the oldest tree growing in England, UK, was reputed to have been planted in 1548 (Grieve, 1931).
Environmental Requirements
Black mulberries can be grown in warm temperate climates, the subtropics and the high-altitude tropics. It is the least cold hardy of the mulberries, compared with M. alba and Morus rubra (American red mulberry). It is deciduous and may require a short chilling period. M. nigra thrives in warm-temperate regions with long, hot summers. It can tolerate drought, infertile soils, and cold temperatures down to -10°C but does not do well in hot tropical zones with humid summers, and grows best at lower altitudes when sheltered from wind and in coastal areas. It prefers warm, well-drained soil such as deep loams and in cultivation it is recommended to avoid planting the species in shallow, chalk or gravelly soils. The species generally occurs from between 0 and 2000 m (Hanelt et al., 2001; Orwa et al., 2009; Lim 2012).
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