Survives zone 6 through 9
Harvest calendar
Best planted in early spring after your last frost, or in fall before the ground freezes, depending on your climate.
Himalayan mulberry — a little-grown, high-altitude species from the Himalaya and southwest China; the mucilaginous fruit is sweet but not very fleshy, generally considered milder and less rich in flavor than black mulberry.
- Hardiness
- Zone 6–9
- Habit
- Tree
- Edible part
- Fruit
- Ripens
- June–Aug
- Mature size
- Tree 8–12 m; dwarf forms containerable
- Light
- Full sun to partial
- Soil pH
- 6.0–7.5 (lime-tolerant)
- Environment
- Montane
- Native range
- Native to the Himalaya and adjacent mountains of southwestern China — including Xizang (Tibet) — as well as India (Himachal Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir, Punjab), Nepal, and northern Pakistan, typically growing in forests and scrub between roughly 1,200 and 2,700m elevation.
- Status
- Both wild and cultivated
- Years to fruit
- 2–3 yrs
- Growth speed
- Medium — a deciduous tree reaching around 15–20m at a rate comparable to the other tree-form mulberry species.
- Spacing
- 550 cm (217 in) apart — about 30 m² (326 sq ft) per plant
- Leaf shape
- Broadly ovate leaves 10–15cm long with coarsely toothed (biserrate) margins, sometimes 3-lobed with a heart-shaped base; upper surface hairless, underside densely hairy along the veins — a coarser, hairier leaf than the other mulberry species.
- Root system
- Brittle, like other mulberries — needs careful handling when transplanting or disturbing established roots.
- Fruit description
- A compound cluster of drupes 2–3cm long, red when ripe, mucilaginous and sweet but not very fleshy — a softer, less rich, less juicy fruit than black mulberry.
- Propagation
- From seed, needing 2–3 months' cold stratification before sowing in late winter, or from cuttings — half-ripe wood (7–10cm with a heel, taken July/August) or mature hardwood cuttings (25–30cm with a two-year-old heel, taken in autumn or early spring); also propagated by autumn layering.
- Pollination
- Dioecious — needs male + female
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
How it spreads. Single-trunked tree to around 15–20m — does not sucker; spreads only by seed.
Growing tips. A high-altitude Himalayan species — native up to about 2,700m — and reportedly cold-hardy within its own mountain range, but it is one of the least-documented mulberries in Western cultivation; sources note real uncertainty about how reliably it performs in cooler temperate gardens, and it is generally treated as suited to the milder end of the mulberry hardiness range (zones 6–9) rather than the colder zones that red mulberry tolerates. Dioecious, so both a male and female plant are needed for fruit. Roots are brittle, so plant with care, and prune only in full winter dormancy since it bleeds sap if cut in growth. Notably resistant to honey fungus.
Grow journal
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