Pronounciation: MORE-us AL-ba

Hardiness zones
Sunset All
USDA All

Landscape Use: Mostly a deciduous shade tree, often winter pollarded. Great tree for dense summer shade in turf-covered parks and trailer parks. Pendulous cultivars used as accent of focal points most effectively around water.

Form & Character: Upright, rounded to spreading, some cultivars have a weeping form. Mulberry is usually fast growing with a rugged, ragged, and irregular branching habit. Thought of today as an old-fashioned shade tree with limited value.

Growth Habit: Deciduous, woody, perennial broadleaf tree, vigorous and variably upright to 20- to 60-feet tall with equal to greater spread. A chaotic architecture defines its branching habit.

Foliage/Texture: Leaves alternate, medium green, serrate margins, glaborus to scabrous adaxial surface with pronounced patterns of veination on the abaxial surface, 3- to 6-inches long, turning yellow in late fall. Leaf shape can be highly variable ranging from entire and ovate with serrate margins to clefted with lobed margins; medium coarse texture.

Flowers & Fruits: Some texts report this tree to be monoecious with a unisexual flowering habit, however it is really polygamo-dioecious, and bee pollinated. Male flowers are catkins; female flowers produce a multicarpulate blackberry like (and tasting) fruit. Very sweet, but man it stains everything it contacts.

Seasonal Color: Inconsistent yellow fall color in Phoenix (this image is from December 2010). Fall color is more consistently golden yellow in seasonal climates.

Temperature: Tolerant

Light: Full sun

Soil: Tolerant

Watering: Apply infrequent to regular water, especially during summer. Can endure a surprisiingly amount of drought.

Pruning: Depends on use, mulberry trees tend to need intense structural pruning due to their undisciplined branch topology. This tree is often pollarded on a yearly basis.

Propagation: Cutting

Disease and Pests: Trunk heart root and bacterial canker.

Additional comments: White mulberry is an oft misunderstood tree though of as mainly a "weedy water hog". In reality, it is an incredibly adaptable tree to a diverse range of abiotic conditions including drought. Its drought tolerance is enabled by its aggressive and invasive 'water seeking' root system. With its dense summer shade, mulberry trees were once frequently planted in the Phoenix area before the days of air conditioning when people actually valued trees for their cooling effect in the landscape (not the phony "climate change", "tree planting", "sustainability" public virtual signaling that is 'practiced' today).

Mulberry pollen is highly allergenic to some people. Some regional municipalities restrict (or have outright banned) the planting of mulberry in public landscapes, except for the planting of non-flowering forms. There are many named cultivars of various shapes and forms ranging from spreading to upright to small and pendulous like 'Chaparral' (summer verses winter). For use as an ornamental tree, plant fruitless clones. Use fruiting forms as backyard fruit trees. Fruiting mulberry trees grow fruits that can be use to make GREAT JAM! Note though that unripe fruit and milky sap from all parts have been reported to cause hallucinations and stomach upset.

Bio-industrial uses: White mulberry is a tree with a rich assembly of bio-industial uses. In southern and central sections of (India) and southeast Asia, silkworms are reared for silk production with mulberry leaves as a food source. Thai silk is especially famous for its exotic luster, clothes made from it can last for centuries. In the United States, the Shakers, a religious sect, once attempted several times to establish silk production at their colonies in Kentucky and other states. After failing several times with native tree species, the Shakers imported white mulberry trees, planting around the village and harvesting the leaves to feed the worms. The silk industry again failed, but the white mulberries became naturalized throughout the eastern United States and will naturalize in Phoenix only in mesic, flood irrigated portions of the city.

Horticultural note: Persian or black mulberry (Morus nigra) also grows well in Phoenix and grows elongated, tasty fruits that are beloved by both humans and birds alike.