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Morus rubra
Also called American Mulberry
Red mulberry is a small to medium deciduous tree native to eastern and central North America, grown for its sweet berries and durable wood. It is a tree that takes about ten years to fruit, so plant it where it has room to grow.
Morus rubra, commonly known as the red mulberry, is a species of mulberry native to eastern and central North America. It is found from Ontario, Minnesota, and Vermont south to southern Florida, and west as far as southeastern South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, and central Texas. There have been reports of isolated populations (very likely naturalized) in New Mexico, Idaho, and British Columbia.
Common in the United States, it is listed as an endangered species in Canada, and is susceptible to hybridization with the invasive white mulberry (M. alba), introduced from Asia.
Red mulberry has not been widely cultivated in much of the world, due to several undesirable characteristics:
The red mulberry cannot be used for silk production, unlike the white mulberry. Silkworms reject the leaves of the red mulberry.
The red mulberry plant is native to the United States. M. rubra occurs from the Atlantic coast to the eastern edge of the Great Plains, south to southern Florida and north to southwestern Ontario in Canada. The native red mulberry can be mostly found in riparian areas and is considered rare and threatened in many areas including northeastern United States and southeastern Canada.
The berries are edible and sweet. The first English colonists to explore eastern Virginia in 1607 mentioned the abundance of both mulberry trees and their fruit, which was eaten (sometimes boiled) by the native Powhatan tribes. Today, mulberries are eaten raw, used in the fillings of pastries, and fermented into wine. They are also used for marmalades, liquors, natural dyes, and cosmetics. The berries are not commercially sold because they have very short "shelf lives" and pack/ship very poorly.
White Mulberry · Indian Mulberry · Mongolian Mulberry · Black Mulberry · Mulberry
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Morus rubra by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
Pet safety from the ASPCA toxic and non-toxic plant lists.
