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Planting
Days to maturity
Seasonal yields
Sow indoors · Direct sow · Transplant outdoors
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Plant · P-024
Mulberry
Morus rubra
Red Mulberry is a fast-growing native shade tree whose dark purple, blackberry-like fruit ripens over several weeks each summer, sweet enough to eat straight off the branch. Ripe fruit drops and squashes underfoot, staining anything beneath the tree, so it wants siting away from a patio or parked car. It needs both a male and a female tree nearby to set fruit, since its small green flowers are wind-pollinated rather than visited by insects. The wood is coarse, durable and has been used for boats, fencing and furniture, and the tree bleeds heavily if cut while in leaf, so pruning is saved for full winter dormancy.
Record at a glance
Growing profile
- Sun
- Full Sun · Partial Sun · Shade
- USDA zone
- USDA 4–8
- Soil
- Sand · Loam · Clay
- Moisture
- Dry · Moist · Well-Drained
Vertical layer
Canopy- Soil pH
- 5–7
- Plant type
- Deciduous Tree
- Mature height
- 25–60 ft
- Mature spread
- 35–40 ft
- Plant spacing
- 24–60 ft
- Root type
- Fibrous-shallow
- Spread pattern
- Seed
Keep exploring
Similar plants
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Juniperus deppeana
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Almond
Prunus amygdalus
Almond flowers earlier than almost any other cultivated tree, which is its biggest weakness as much as its gift to early pollinators - a warm…
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American Basswood
Tilia americana
American Basswood is famous for the bees - mature trees hum audibly for several feet around when they bloom in early summer, giving one of…
Canopy · USDA 3–8
American Beech
Fagus grandifolia
American Beech is a slow, long-lived shade tree that can establish and eventually fruit even under an existing forest canopy, unlike almost…
Canopy · USDA 3–9
American Chestnut
Castanea dentata
American chestnut once carried the sweetest nut of any chestnut species and covered more than 200 million acres of eastern forest, but an…
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American Elm
Ulmus americana
American Elm is a native stream-bank tree that grows into a 60 to 80 foot vase-shaped shade crown and, once mature, becomes one of the…
Canopy · USDA 3–9
The deeper layer
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- Primary
- Locked ecological function
- Secondary
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- Byproduct
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Behind the record
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