Mongolian mulberry

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Survives zone 4 through 8

Harvest calendar

Best planted in early spring after your last frost, or in fall before the ground freezes, depending on your climate.

A hardy mountain mulberry from China and Korea, growing wild on cliffs and in ravines up to 3500 m. Fruit to 25mm, sweet but rather insipid — pleasant enough fresh, unremarkable beside black mulberry. Dioecious, so a crop needs both a male and a female tree.

Hardiness

Zone 4–8

Habit

Tree

Edible part

Fruit

Ripens

July–Aug

Mature size

Small tree to 7.5 m

Light

Full sun to light woodland shade

Soil pH

5.5–8.0 (mildly acid to mildly alkaline)

Environment

Montane

Native range

Temperate Asia — much of China and Korea, on cliffs, ravines, mountain slopes and forests at 500–3500 m.

Status

Wild

Years to fruit

4–6 yrs

Growth speed

Moderate

Spacing

500 cm (197 in) apart — about 25 m² (269 sq ft) per plant

Leaf shape

Alternate, ovate 5–15 cm, coarsely and sharply toothed with each tooth drawn out to a fine bristle point — the character that separates this from the other mulberries — and often lobed on young growth.

Root system

Deep and wide-spreading, drought-tough, as befits a tree of dry cliffs and ravines to 3,500 m. Mulberry roots are brittle and resent disturbance once established.

Fruit description

A blackberry-like aggregate to about 2.5 cm, ripening red then dark purple in midsummer. Sweet but rather flat and watery — pleasant fresh off the tree, unremarkable in a bowl beside a good M. nigra.

Propagation

Hardwood cuttings in winter or softwood under mist in summer; grafting for selected forms. Seed germinates after cold stratification but the tree is dioecious, so seedlings are a coin-toss for sex.

Pollination

Dioecious — plant both a male and 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.