White Mulberry

PatinPA

5 year old buck +
Anybody have problems with white mulberries? I found a few growing in the ditch in my backyard and was going to transplant them until I heard they can be invasive.
 
A good read if you are interested in mulberry ... http://go.osu.edu/mulberry.

Deer love to browse them; if you continually cut any central leaders off them (keep them in a bush format) deer will work them over quite heavily. The minute one of the bushes produced a berry, I'd cut it and treat the stump. They grow pretty fast. For me, there are other shrubs like (e.g., ROD, Ninebark, Plums) that provide browse without becoming invasive.
 
Last edited:
I am planting American plums, and chokecherry bushes this spring, and they both can become invasive. But I think I have enough deer in the area to keep them under control.
 
It's not invasive where I live. Mulberry (both red and white) are a highly preferred browse for deer. And I might add that Illinois Everbearing mulberries are a high preferred browse for ME......
 
I grew up in Ohio with several mature red mulberry trees around the house. They were not invasive, and deer would come into the yard to eat yellow leaves that had fallen to the ground in Fall. Birds went crazy over the berries too. I don't have any experience with white mulberry.

I would probably do what Oakseeds recommended. I would also plant red mulberry anywhere I could fit one in.
 
We had a white in our yard when I was growing up. Don't remember any problems with it taking off. We have a red now and I much prefer the berries. I plan to plant more of them on my hunting property.
 
It's not invasive where I live. Mulberry (both red and white) are a highly preferred browse for deer. And I might add that Illinois Everbearing mulberries are a high preferred browse for ME......

.........and every other one of God's creatures

Fruit doesn't last long on red mulberry trees in east texas

bill
 
That cat is pretty much out of the bag.
But! You can transplant them and graft them over to more desirable fruiting cultivars, like Silk Hope, Illinois Everbearing, etc., or even a good native M.rubra.
As others have said, Deer will browse them aggressively, so if you want berries, you'll need to cage or tube your grafts.
Or, just keep 'em coppiced as a shrub and let the deer have their way with them.
 
I am planting a black beauty today!

I have been told the berries stain stuff, so I am planting it on flat ground 200 yards from the house.
 
Thanks everybody. I think I'll transplant them then. I have no shortage of deer so they should stay pretty trimmed up. There are also a couple of larger berry producing trees right behind the gas station near me so there is no shortage of transplant opportunities too.
 
Anybody have problems with white mulberries? I found a few growing in the ditch in my backyard and was going to transplant them until I heard they can be invasive.
Its extremely invasive. I am in the process of killiing hundreds. Do NOT encourage them. One tree will make hundreds of thousands of seeds. Instead of saving them kill them.
 
Its extremely invasive. I am in the process of killiing hundreds. Do NOT encourage them. One tree will make hundreds of thousands of seeds. Instead of saving them kill them.
What part of the U.S. are you in?
 
I'm in southeast South Dakota. Used to live in Kansas. It was horribly invasive there as well. And nothing really eats it. deer don't browse it so it increases and the good stuff decreases.
 
I'm in southeast South Dakota. Used to live in Kansas. It was horribly invasive there as well. And nothing really eats it. deer don't browse it so it increases and the good stuff decreases.
Interesting they are that invasive in zone 4b. Very, very few can survive winters in 4a/3b.
 
From what I know the variety here is the most hardy. I think I've read it was called Russian mulberry. I may be at the northern edge of its range. That said. I hate the stuff. But the fruit can be delicious or quite bland.
 
Not a fan of M.alba, and have mostly refrained from purposely planting or grafting cultivars that I know are pure M.alba, though I have grafted some M.rubra and hybrid selections onto M.alba understock. But... most of the really good fruiting cultivars that work in most of the USA are hybrids of M.rubra X alba. Think "Illinois Everbearing', 'Silk Hope', 'Collier', 'Stearns', 'Lawson Dawson', etc.
And... trashy M.alba is present in every abandoned fencerow or ditchbank in town, 5 miles away... don't think for a minute that birds won't feast in town and poop out seeds here on the farm... so, as I said earlier... that cat is already out of the bag. Even though our native M.rubra is still pretty common out here in the country, KY Div. of Forestry has abdicated on trying to find pure M.rubra... I bought a bundle of 100 'Red mulberry' from the state forestry nursery, a few years back... not a pure M.rubra in the bunch... all are hybrids, and most look like they're probably 3/4 alba 1/4 rubra, at best. Had a discussion on that with the local KY forestry guy just recently... he said that, in the past, he'd been the one assigned to gather mulberry seed. He'd given up on finding fruiting females (I know where at least two big ones are, right next to the road)... so just gathered fruit from any fruiting mulberry they could find.

There's a lot of confusion/misinformation about mulberries in the 'nursery trade'... a lot of varieties are labeled 'Black mulberry' or M.nigra (the TRUE Black mulberry)... but are not... they're just purple/black-fruited selections... in many cases, a M.alba, M.macroura, or an albaXrubra hybrid True M.nigra/Black mulberry will not survive in the vast majority of the US... it prefers a 'Mediterranean' climate... will not tolerate the humidity of the South/Southeast and Midwest.
Lucille Whitman offers a couple of true M.nigras - 'Noir de Spain' and 'King James'... but one that she was advertising as M.nigra, a few years ago, 'Sicilian Black' is not... it's a M.alba.
Unless your 'Black Beauty' is coming from a west-coast nursery, like Dave Wilson Nurseries or Whitman Farms... it won't be a M.nigra, regardless of what the nursery says...
 
How drought tolerant and ph picky is this invasive bugger?

sounds very interesting.
 
How drought tolerant and ph picky is this invasive bugger?

sounds very interesting.
I had 5 or 6 pop up in my tree bed over the last couple of years. The closest trees that I know of are a few 100 yards away. They certainly grow fast and spread. I'm guessing the birds spread them quickly. The biggest is probably 4 ft tall already in 2 years with no help whatsoever. I'm in zone 6B.
 
I see them growing in some pretty inhospitable urban settings. Don't think they're very pH or soil-quality sensitive. I do know, for a fact, however, that mulberries in pasture fencelines or barnlots, where the horses & cows lounge, poop & pee make bigger, tastier fruits than the same variety grafted and growing 100 yds away in my yard.

The Hybrid seedlings we bought from the state forestry nursery - advertised as red mulberries - were mostly planted out along pasture division fences, but we sold the cows in 2019 and pulled out the 5-acre paddock divsion fences. Deer decimate them... they keep them browsed, bucks rub the hell out of any stem that gets bigger than a pencil and sticks up more than a foot above the ground. A few of them 'got away'... gained enough height/size that the deer can't hurt them significantly. None are particularly good fruiters, and at least one is a male. So... this spring, I'm lopping their heads off at about 6 ft and grafting in superior fruiting varieties. I'd prefer, if random volunteer seedlings popping up around the place aren't pure M.rubra, that at least they'll be of hybrid parentage with superior fruit quality.
I've got one here in the barnyard that I'm pretty certain is a seedling of one of the Illnois Everbearing trees we planted in 1996... it's got fruit quality, size, and length of bearing season every bit the equal of the IE parent.

I had white peach scale show up last year, and it's really hammering my GOOD mulberries here in the orchard & around the house & barnlot. In general, I regard a good fruiting mulberry as a 'no-spray' fruit... but I think I'm gonna have to figure out some way to do a hort oil spray on mine this year.
 
my bare root mulberry came from Georgia so I am guessing it’s a white ( black beauty)

i thought I only needed one to get fruit?

will it polinate a true red if I find one?
 
Top