Looking for white mulberry trees for research

[Connor Youngerman]

Greetings forestry ning communities!

 

My name is Connor Youngerman, and I’m an extension support specialist at the Cornell Small Farms Program; my focus is agroforestry and mushroom production. 

We are currently working on a research grant to establish white mulberry as a silvopasture crop. White mulberry is the cornerstone of the silk/silk moth industry and has been cultivated by humas for at least 4000 years. It was brought to the US in the early 1600s, and Ben Franklin pushed for all landowners to grow a few trees (this was actually mandated by law in Virginia for a little while) to start a silk industry here. Obviously this never panned out…

But now, white mulberry is common in every state except Alaska. Though it is often classified as a moderately invasive species, this is largely due to its ability to hybridize with our native Red Mulberry, rather than its ability to dominate an ecosystem. Because white mulberry can grow in a wide range of pH, temperature, saline, alkaline, and altitude conditions, it has wide applicability as a resilient fodder crop across the US. There is a ton of literature from oversees that shows mulberry leaves as fodder improves gut health, and meat and milk production in cows, sheep, goats, pigs, and water buffalo; and can be used for chicken and fish production too.

 White mulberry can be managed as a tree (normally the case for shade and fruit), or as a coppice. Here, a stump is allowed to grow sprouts, which are harvested every year or couple years as a “cut and carry forage.” 

For part of our research, we are looking for populations of naturalized white mulberry trees that can be cut down and experimented on as a coppice. The goal is to have a few populations of 16 or 20 trees in 3 or 4 hardiness zones in NY. I’d cut the trees, wrap the stumps with a hardware cloth cone to keep the deer off, and monitor and sample once or twice a year for four years. We will determine how the pruning regime affects forage quality, along with other genetic and environmental factors. The focus is on wild individuals so we can get a sense for the existing genetics in the state, and provide results that are immediately useful to farmers.

 If you have some easily-accessible white mulberry trees that could do with a trim, I’d love to hear from you. Extra points if you have a grove...

 Thanks for reading!

Connor

[Lew Ward]

Connor, 
I haven't visited cornellforestconnect in some time. My bad.

White mulberry and it's hybrids are a bit marginal in the hills south of Ithaca. I started researching mulberries  in 1980/81 after a member of the North American Fruit Explorers encouraged me. He said that no one who understood pomology has written about them.  I have a BS degree in pomology and was involved with the Cornell Tree Crops Project for several years. We visited John Hershey's tree crops farm and I documented his 15 white mulberry trees that were planted in 30's and 40's. They weren't great tasting and were likely selected for feeding stock. 

Here, in the Inlet Valley they often get hit by late Spring frosts, killing back the previous seasons shoots. We regularly get 23F frosts in late May just as the buds are breaking. I haven't seen or heard of grooves of white mulberry in the Ithaca area Though you should talk with F. Robert Wesley, he's a field botanist. I explored the Ithaca area for mulberry trees regularly in the early 80's, there was a fairly large and very productive white mulberry along rte 13 near Buttermilk Falls. It dropped it's fruits in a weeks time and was near several other mulberries. Never saw any seedlings, a few years later the tree died. I think since then invasive plants such as bush honeysuckle have out competed white mulberries in natural areas, though you do see occasional trees here and there.  Perhaps Geneva and Canadaigua areas would have more white mulberries. 

  Early in my research I noticed that almost all established  mulberries had twig dieback and smallish "witches' brooms."  I arranged a meeting with Dr. Wayne Sinclair, a plant pathologist I had studied with, who specialised in woody plants he had noticed the witches' brooms peformed some tests. He determined that they were a response to frost damage. 

My review of the early plant manuals from a number of states showed that as white mulberries  weren't common in the midwest until after the 1870's In West Virginia the white mulberry appeared a little later and started hybridizing with the native red mulberry. This created hybrids that were grown for the horticultural trade. I found on that bore from late June to early October with increasingly fewer berries. I named it 'Cascadilla' because I found it in downtown Ithaca in a yard along Cascadilla Creek.

I have one Cascadilla and possibly 2 from John Hershey's, but they were not really suited for a cold USDA Zone 4/5.

Good luck