Growing Mulberries Naturally

Thank you Winn, that is informative. 22 ploidy? That's hard to imagine!

So, my 5 year old tree that was started from a seed from a common black mulberry fruit (probably M. alba I guess) has been very healthy and is taller than me and wider than it is tall, but still hasn't produced fruit, or even anything that looked like it might be flowers.

Last Feb I got cuttings from somebody in my region, from trees that I was told one has white fruit and one has very long black fruit. I kept the cuttings in a bucket of water in the greenhouse until warm enough, and then planted out into a garden bed. Some of both types did leaf out, not hugely vigorously but did seem alive all the way until first frost in October, so I hope they are. I had thought maybe my original oldest tree is male (even though I don't see anything like flowers) so maybe having trees from cuttings from two fruiting trees would be a good match. But now I learn maybe the long black ones are totally different species? Whoah!

This November I had some grapes that were a bit too sour and intense so I wanted to make jam, and instead of adding sugar I decided to simple mix in dried black mulberries (black colored fruit, maybe M. alba I guess). It came out awesome! Highly recommend, wow! I'm going to do it again next year when my black currants produce for the first time.

I ran the seedy black grapes through a hand-cranked food mill after cooking them in their own juices long enough to go soft. Then I simmered the dried mulberries in the grape juice until fully hydrated, and canned it.  

Rebecca Norman wrote:
So, my 5 year old tree that was started from a seed from a common black mulberry fruit (probably M. alba I guess) has been very healthy and is taller than me and wider than it is tall, but still hasn't produced fruit, or even anything that looked like it might be flowers.

I do believe that both nigra and alba are grown in that region, so it could easily be either. The leaves are very different on nigra, they are fuzzy and look almost like fig leaves. Never shiny at all. Alba leaves come in a wide range of shapes and textures, but never really as fig-like, at least not that I've seen.

Another big difference is the appearance of the dormant buds. On alba, the buds in winter are usually pale brown or tan, while on nigra they are very dark brown, basically black (and incidentally, the species is actually named for this black bud color, not the black fruit).