← mulberry
rights unknown
Silk Hope
Natural Morus alba × M. rubra cross
The record
- Parentage
- Natural Morus alba × M. rubra cross
- Origin
- Found by A. J. Bullard · North Carolina
- Rights
- rights unknown — No patent, certificate, or trademark found in the sources consulted.
- Fruit
- About 1½ inches long, sweet and black; flavour compared to ‘Illinois Everbearing’
- Season
- Ripens over about two months in early summer
Description
A chance wild alba × rubra cross found by A. J. Bullard, the North Carolina nurseryman who also stands behind the ‘Pakistan’ introduction.
The two-month ripening window is the trait to note for a food forest. A mulberry that fruits over eight weeks is a very different thing in a system than one that dumps its whole crop in ten days: it feeds people and birds continuously, and it never presents a harvest large enough to need processing. Whether that is a feature depends entirely on what the planting is for.