Mulberry Chelsea (King James I)

[CJ Pyrus]

Hi there

I'm dutifully tending a black mulberry tree in my garden that I bought in autumn 2016. It's morus nigra Chelsea (syn King James I). I'm obviously hoping to get some fruit in the future, but they are slow growing trees and take a while to start fruiting, so I'm still waiting...

While I'm waiting, I'd love to hear from anyone else who has planted this variety. Have you bought and planted one yourself? How is it doing? Have you had any fruit yet?

If you were lucky enough to inherit a mature mulberry tree I'm less interested (but still interested anything to do with mulberries is interesting to me!). In such cases you probably won't know the exact variety or age. What I really want to hear is people's experiences with planting and establishing this tree.

Over the years I think I've read just about every online article I can find about these trees. But I'm sceptical about the quality of some information on the web because
- they're unusual trees and slow to grow/mature, so I bet few people actually have direct experience
- the different species and varieties are easy to confuse
I suspect most of the information you come across (including on pages selling them) is just copied/pasted from other sites. I'd really like to hear from people who have planted this tree and have some actual experience.

Chelsea mulberries have become a bit of an obsession for me. I first bought one in 2013 (a bare-rooted plant, mail ordered from a well-known supplier of fruit trees) but that was a failure because it eventually turned out that I'd been sold the wrong tree. It was, in fact, some variety of white mulberry (morus alba, a different species). Annoyingly I lost 3 years because of that! (It took me a while to realise what had happened because distinguishing mulberry species is quite hard, it's not as simple as the colour of the fruit). I was quite angry and complained, but anyway that's another story...

[devonuk]

My tale of woe

I bought 5 small potted Chelsea black mulberries in about 2004. Gave one away - died, apparently. Planted 3 of which 2 grubbed up by subsequent purchasers, 3rd was fruiting copiously by age 6 or 7. The 5th I kept in increasingly larger pots until I planted it out 5 years ago. It is flourishing but has never flowered or fruited, and I have no idea why not given that i know one of the batch did. Any suggestions gratefully received.

I agree about books. They all say you take socking great cuttings called truncheons and stick them in the ground and they root, and that if you prune the trees at the wrong time they bleed to death. Rubbish in both cases.

[CJ Pyrus]

devonuk thanks for sharing. Your story can perhaps be viewed optimistically: only 2 of the original 5 trees have been on your watch, and of those one succeeded and the other is flourishing, if not yet fruiting. Perhaps it will evntually.

The only advice I can suggest is to try some summer pruning if you haven't already (which my RHS Growing Fruit book recommends for wall-trained mulberries: prune side shoots to 4 or 5 leaves in July, and prune leaders in April).

In my ill-fated first attempt I actually bought 2 bare-rooted trees. I planted both in the open but I experimented by winter pruning one (as recommended) and summer pruning the other (only recommended for wall-trained). The summer-pruned tree started fruiting first, and was growing in a nicer shape too, so I felt it had worked well. Certainly, I saw no sign of ill-effects or the unstoppable bleeding that the books warn about.

However, the big caveat on that experience of mine is that the 2 trees I bought as Morus nigra Chelsea actually turned out to be Morus alba that had been mis-sold to me. Nevertheless, if your tree is robust you might feel confident enough to try summer pruning a part of it.

[Hereford fruit grower]

Agreed, white mulberries are being sold with misleading varietal names, like 'Black Tabor'.
That one is basically Morus alba and not M. nigra, actually I think it might be a more complicated cross, but you get the point.

I gave mine away to a friend with a very large garden. They also grow larger than Morus nigra but the books say they don't live as long.

I then bought a Morus nigra variety 'Repsime', described as superior to the species, which died after a year. The supplier wouldn't listen to complaints.

Are named varieties too fragile for our harsh northern climate? After all mulberries are hardly a native tree and the only county where I've heard of anything like a 'mulberry orchard' is Essex; elsewhere it seems to be single trees in sheltered gardens only.

In exasperation I bought a small tree in a 9 cm pot from a 3rd supplier. This is still in its pot. I'm giving it a lot of TLC to ensure hopefully that it doesn't go the way of the 2nd. tree.

In 2015 a mature mulberry tree in a garden in north Herefordshire, 5-6 m high was cut down for no apparent reason. It slightly overhung a supermarket car park and was loaded with fruit every August which remained unpicked ... except for what knowing customers helped themselves to. So if I'm 3rd time lucky it will still only leave the number of mulberry trees in the area 'stable'.

[devonuk]

REJOICE!

Found this morning - 18 years waiting pay off. Yippee.