Photo: Emőke Dénes — CC BY-SA 4.0 · source
Survives zone 4 through 9
Harvest calendar
Best planted in early spring after your last frost, or in fall before the ground freezes, depending on your climate.
Morus alba is the classic white mulberry of the Old-World silk trade — its leaves are the preferred, most easily digested feed for the silkworm Bombyx mori, and its sweet but often mild-flavored fruit ripens white, pink, red, or near-black depending on the tree. In much of temperate North America it has also become a weedy, bird-spread colonizer that hybridizes with, and displaces, the native red mulberry, Morus rubra.
- Hardiness
- Zone 4–9
- Habit
- Tree
- Edible part
- Fruit
- Ripens
- June–Aug
- Mature size
- Tree 8–12 m; dwarf forms containerable
- Light
- Full sun; tolerates partial
- Soil pH
- 6.0–7.5 (lime-tolerant)
- Environment
- Temperate
- Native range
- Native to central and northern China — the species is not known to survive today in a truly wild state, having been so long and widely cultivated for silk production that it has naturalized across Asia and been carried nearly worldwide.
- Status
- Cultivated
- Years to fruit
- 2–3 yrs
- Growth speed
- Fast-growing, commonly reaching 6–12m within a few years and eventually up to about 18m at a medium-to-fast overall rate.
- Spacing
- 900 cm (354 in) apart — about 81 m² (872 sq ft) per plant
- Leaf shape
- Alternate, simple leaves that are highly variable even on the same tree — unlobed and heart- or mitten-shaped through irregularly 2–7 lobed — with deep lobing most common on vigorous young shoots, root sprouts, and sun-grown trees, and unlobed leaves more common on shaded, mature growth.
- Root system
- Brittle roots that need careful handling when transplanting; produces aggressive, wide-spreading surface roots and, in North America, root suckers that can form dense thickets — a documented contributor to its weedy spread.
- Fruit description
- A cylindrical, blackberry-like syncarp to about 2.5cm long, ripening from white or pale pink through red to purple-black; soft, juicy texture and a sweet flavor that is nonetheless characteristically mild to insipid fresh, developing a richer, more concentrated sweetness once dried.
- Propagation
- Easily propagated from hardwood cuttings — 25–30cm sections of mature wood taken in autumn or early spring — or from semi-ripe cuttings (7–10cm with a heel, taken in midsummer), both of which root readily; also grown from seed after 2–3 months' cold stratification, and grafted onto seedling rootstock to preserve named fruiting cultivars.
- Pollination
- PFAF documents the species as monoecious and self-fertile — bearing both male and female wind-pollinated flowers on a single tree — although many named fruiting cultivars sold in the trade are propagated as single-sex clones, consistent with the usual recommendation to plant a female for fruit.
The edible parts listed above are a starting point, not a field guide. Identify a plant with certainty — ideally against a local authority — before eating any part of it, and read the full disclaimer. Spotted something wrong? Report it.
Growing guide
Fertilizing. Tolerant of poor soils and needs little feeding once established; a moderate spring application of compost or balanced fertilizer is enough where fruit production is the goal — excess nitrogen pushes soft vegetative growth at the expense of fruiting and increases susceptibility to disease.
How it spreads. Documented as invasive and weedy in parts of North America — bird-dispersed seed lets it colonize hedgerows, waste ground, and forest edges, and it can also produce root suckers that form dense thickets; in well-managed cultivation, though, it is normally grown as a single-trunked tree.
Growing tips. Hardy across USDA zones 4–9, tolerating cold considerably better than most of its Morus relatives, which — combined with its status as the preferred food plant of the silkworm Bombyx mori — is why it was carried around the globe for sericulture. Like the rest of the genus it is notably resistant to honey fungus (Armillaria), though bacterial blight and fruit rots can appear in wet springs. Because it is a documented aggressive self-seeder in parts of North America, gardeners in areas where it is regulated or invasive should favor known male or fruitless cultivars, or site it where seedlings can be controlled.
Grow journal
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