Photo: Unknown — Public domain · source
Survives zone 5 through 9
Harvest calendar
Best planted in early spring after your last frost, or in fall before the ground freezes, depending on your climate.
Black mulberry — rich, sweet-tart, the best of the mulberries.
- Hardiness
- Zone 5–9
- Habit
- Tree
- Edible part
- Fruit
- Ripens
- July–Aug
- Mature size
- Tree 8–12 m; dwarf forms containerable
- Light
- Full sun — fruit sugar needs sun
- Soil pH
- 6.0–7.5 (lime-tolerant)
- Environment
- Temperate
- Native range
- Original wild range is obscure — long believed native to western Asia, likely Iran/Persia — but the species has been cultivated across the Mediterranean, Central Asia and the Caribbean for so many centuries that its natural distribution has been obscured by ancient introduction.
- Status
- Cultivated
- Years to fruit
- 2–3 yrs
- Growth speed
- Medium — reaches 10–12m over time, with full cropping maturity often taking a decade or more.
- Spacing
- 550 cm (217 in) apart — about 30 m² (326 sq ft) per plant
- Leaf shape
- Notably variable — heart-shaped (cordate) to irregularly lobed, with multi-lobed and unlobed leaves often found on the same branch; upper surface rough and dark green, underside downy, margins coarsely serrate.
- Root system
- Shallow and wide-spreading, and distinctly brittle — reported to buckle paving where roots run under it; resents root disturbance, so container-grown stock transplants best.
- Fruit description
- A long, cylindrical compound berry to about 2.5cm, resembling a large blackberry or raspberry, deep red-black when fully ripe — very juicy with a rich, intensely sweet-tart, almost wine-like flavor. Widely regarded by growers as the best-flavored of all the mulberries, though the fruit is fragile and drops as soon as ripe, so it neither ships nor stores well.
- Propagation
- Easy from hardwood cuttings — mature wood cuttings 25–30cm taken in autumn or early spring, or half-ripe cuttings 7–10cm in July/August; also grown from seed after 2–3 months' cold stratification, and by autumn layering. Named cultivars are usually struck from cuttings to keep fruit quality true.
- Pollination
- Self-fertile/parthenocarpic
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. Benefits from an annual application of compost or a balanced slow-release fertilizer in late winter/early spring; avoid heavy nitrogen, which pushes soft leafy growth at the expense of fruit and raises the risk of frost damage if applied late in the season.
How it spreads. Single-trunked tree — does not sucker or colonize; in the wild it spreads only by seed carried by birds that eat the fruit.
Growing tips. Wants a warm, sheltered, sunny site on deep, well-drained soil — tolerates lime and atmospheric pollution. Grows at a medium rate but can take up to about 15 years to reach heavy fruiting on a seedling tree. Roots are brittle, so handle transplants carefully, and the tree bleeds sap if cut outside full dormancy — prune only in winter.
Grow journal
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