6 Year Old Mulberry has never had blooms

Hi Folks.

What to do with a 6 year old Mulberry which is growing but has never had any blooms?

I live in a rental so do not know what type of Mulberry it is.

I intend to trim it back hard this week to see if that will provoke some change. Here is a photo.
ANY ideas or links to information about Non Blooming Mulberry .
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also, I have researched online to find how much is okay to trim back.
Have read that is okay to trim back up to half, during dormancy.

Many thanks for your time and attention.

Mulberry trees are wind pollinated. In some species, there are male trees, and female trees. Other species have both types of flowers on the same plant. Female flowers are small and inconspicuous. Male flowers are catkins, so long dangling things.

Hi Joseph, thank you for your reply.

Having lived with this bush for three growing seasons, we have never seen
anything but leaves, and i have looked with a magnifier, just in case.

And the owner says she has never seen anything other than leaves.

Could it be, that it isn't going to have any? or do you think the trimming might
provoke a shift.

THERe is also a hardy kiwi vine here, that was never trimmed, and once i did that we had over a thousand kiwis!

I have hacked my volunteer mulberry to the trunk at the start of spring,it was leafed in by fall...
Can't hurt,it might help!

I have read that mulberries started from seeds can take up to 20 years to fruit. So if this is a tree that was started from a seed, it might be some years before you see fruits.

You could try grafting. That will likely hasten the fruiting, plus you can try a selected variety.

Are all mulberry trees dioecious?
The pfaf.org database http://www.pfaf.org/user/Plant.aspx?LatinName=Morus+nigra
says nigra is monoecious. I have a 10 year old M. nigra tree that gets covered in fruits but they are only 1cm long and fall quickly. I only have the one tree as I assumed it was self fertile but I am now wondering if these are unfertilised fruit? I am not aware of any other trees in the area. Or is it just that is a young tree still?

thanks

No one has raised the possibility that this is a nonfruiting variety http://homeguides.sfgate.com/nonbearing-mulberry-trees-29508.html particularly if it was planted as a landscape tree. Does anyone know how to rule this out?

This article is quite interesting https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/ornamental/trees/fruitless-mulberry/how-to-grow-mulberry-trees.htm
Far be it for me to argue with Joseph but I will I have never come across Mulberrys having different sex trees like hollys everyone I have seen seems to be hermaphrodite. ( good word for scrabble that )
Since comercial types hybridise with your  native red mulberrys its anyones guess what you have
I would  take some hardwood  cuttings and graft on some black mulberry

Gail, you probably have a male mulberry tree there. If so, it will never bear fruit. It also could be a female that just hasn't flowered yet. If I were you, I'd leave it alone for a couple more years and see if it does fruit. The flowers on female trees look like small green mulberries with white hairs. They emerge with new growth in the spring all along the branches.
Female mulberries in the absence of a male will set fruit with almost no viable seeds, but they'll still fruit.

It could be a paper mulberry. I just found out about paper mulberries; bred more for paper production than fruits

Alex Freedman wrote:Hi Folks.

What to do with a 6 year old Mulberry which is growing but has never had any blooms?

I live in a rental so do not know what type of Mulberry it is.

I intend to trim it back hard this week to see if that will provoke some change. Here is a photo.
ANY ideas or links to information about Non Blooming Mulberry .
~~~~~~


also, I have researched online to find how much is okay to trim back.
Have read that is okay to trim back up to half, during dormancy.

Many thanks for your time and attention.

I don't see a reply button. Anyway, I was told that I have a Fruitless Mulberry Tree. Unfortunately, it will never fruit. Yours doesn't look like mine which is large so I don't know if it is that type. I just had to cut mine back a lot because most of it was dead and I am wondering if that type is good for hugelkultur.

David Livingston wrote:Far be it for me to argue with Joseph but I will I have never come across Mulberrys having different sex trees like hollys everyone I have seen seems to be hermaphrodite. ( good word for scrabble that )
Since comercial types hybridise with your  native red mulberrys its anyones guess what you have
I would  take some hardwood  cuttings and graft on some black mulberry

My birdie planted tree has both male and female flowers every spring. Opposing flowers occur on the same branches. We harvested 3 gallons of berries this year.

It took only 4 years to begin fruiting. I have another tree about 10 years old that has not fruited. I will be grafting this one. I haven't decided whether to get ever bearing Illinois,  or propagate mine. David, why do you suggest black mulberry?

David Livingston wrote: hermaphrodite. ( good word for scrabble that )

Im not seeing how this word even possible in scrabble.

We have in Thailand a lot of Mulberries for our silk worm production.
The Mulberry tree grows high, has long branches and never blooms, neither female nor male.

We propagate them by sticking cuttings in the ground which root quite reliable.

If these we have is the same you got is another question but it is sure there are Mulberries which are not blooming..

I have a really big mulberry tree that has huge leaves. I have never seen it have any type of flowers on it. Last year, we discovered three small female mulberry trees on other parts of the property. We found one small male tree with flowers on it. I don’t understand why this big Mulberry tree has no flowers. I have no idea how old it is, but it looks very old.