Re: Fruiting mulberry?
- To: "Tony & Moira Ryan"
- Subject: Re: Fruiting mulberry?
- From: J* M*
- Date: Mon, 15 May 2000 21:57:55 -0700
Nan,
My face is red and the world is far more complex than I ever suspected. I
didn't look it up before I wrote what I did, so I deserve to have egg all
over my face. Moira Ryan, quite diplomatically by private e-mail, has
pointed out to me that Morus can be either dioecious or monoecious, and that
the typical fruiting mulberry is self-fertile. The only mulberries I have
experienced have been dioecious ones. I was aware that the "fruitless"
varieties were male clones, but I did not know that they were suppressed
hermaphrodites. Please accept my apologies.
John MacGregor
jonivy@earthlink.net
----------
>From: Tony & Moira Ryan <theryans@xtra.co.nz>
>To: jonivy@earthlink.net
>Subject: Re: Fruiting mulberry?
>Date: Mon, May 15, 2000, 4:09 PM
>
> John MacGregor wrote:
>>
>> Nan,
>>
>> Mulberries are dioecious (from the Greek, di+oicos, in two houses, i.e.,
>> sexes on separate plants). Monoecious (one house) is a plant that has
>> separate male and female flowers on the same plant. I know this because I
>> am violently allergic to mulberry pollen, and the house in Albuquerque where
>> I lived when I was in high school was shaded by three huge mulberries--a
>> red- and a white-berried female and one male. The females produced huge
>> crops virtually every year, and the berries were delicious, but when they
>> were in bloom, I was on an oxygen tank. On these trees, the flowers opened
>> just before the leaf bud were beginning to break (to better facilitate
>> pollen transport). If I remember correctly, by the time the catkins faded
>> the leaves were about half expanded.
>>
>> John MacGregor
>> jonivy@earthlink.net
>>
>> ----------
>> >From: Nan Sterman <nsterman@mindsovermatter.com>
>> >To: "John MacGregor" <jonivy@earthlink.net>
>> >Subject: Re: Fruiting mulberry?
>> >Date: Sun, May 14, 2000, 8:25 PM
>> >
>>
>> > Hi John and thank you for that information. I was trained as a
>> > botanist long ago so I never expect easy answers to plant questions!
>> > I always expect to experiment a bit. I didn't realize that
>> > mulberries are either male or female (is that monaceous or
>> > diaceous?). I have two plants so maybe I'll be lucky and end up with
>> > one of each. Once they are mature enough to bloom, will they bloom
>> > before they leaf out?
>> >
>> > Nan
>> >
>> >>Nan.
>> >>
>> >>First you must understand that mulberries have male and female flowers on
>> >>separate plants. Thus some trees will have fruit and some just
pollen-laden
>> >>catkins. Statistically, you probably have a fifty-fifty chance of having a
>> >>seedling fruit eventually, but in small numbers, yours could be either sex.
>> >>In my experience, it may take several years before they bloom, and then
>> >>fruiting will depend somewhat upon getting pollinated, although mulberries
>> >>are so commonly planted in urban America and the pollen is so widely
>> >>distributed by the wind that the chances are high probably that when your
>> >>female plant does get around to blooming, it will set fruit. I'm not sure
>> >>that this is the easy answer you were expecting, but that's the way it is.
>
>
>> >>
> John
> This information had me puzzled, as when I had fruit on my mulberry tree
> there was unlikely to have been another closer than several miles.
> However this was certainly Morus nigra, the European (Black) mulberry
> and though it would have the typical separate male and female flowers,
> it presumably can carry both on the same tree.
>
> I looked up the family (Moraceae) in Flowering Plants of the World and
> it says "throughout the family the flowers are unisexual, borne on the
> same or separate plants" which certainly allows for this possibility.
>
> This is a quite surprising and interesting family as it contains not
> only mulberries, but figs, hops, breadfruits, Osage orange and even
> Cannabis!!!
>
> Moira
> --
> Tony & Moira Ryan <theryans@xtra.co.nz>
> Wainuiomata, New Zealand. (on the "Ring of Fire" in the SW Pacific).
> Lat. 41:16S Long. 174:58E. Climate: Mediterranean/Temperate
>
>
>
