← mulberry
rights unknown
Illinois Everbearing
Natural Morus alba × M. rubra hybrid
The record
- Parentage
- Natural Morus alba × M. rubra hybrid
- Origin
- Found by Peter Glaser · Wabash River bottomlands, White County, Illinois · found 1947; introduced 1958 by the Burgess Seed and Plant Co., Galesburg, Michigan
- Rights
- rights unknown — No patent, certificate, or trademark found in the sources consulted. It was introduced commercially in 1958.
- Season
- Long bearing season — the everbearing habit the name records
- Fruit
- Sweet, dark, well regarded
- Parentage
- A natural white-by-red hybrid
Description
The standard by which other American mulberries are described, and a chance seedling found on the Wabash bottomlands in 1947.
It is worth being clear about what it is not: it was not bred by a university, despite later extension recommendations that made it look institutional. Peter Glaser found it, and a seed company in Michigan introduced it in 1958. The pattern by now runs through every file in this database — the best available cultivar of a minor crop is usually something somebody noticed.
It is also a natural alba × rubra hybrid, which puts it squarely inside the introgression question raised in the notes above. Nothing about that makes it a bad tree. It makes it a tree to site knowingly.