Red, White or Black Mulberry?

Hello,
I just became a member two days ago and have been learning so much from everyone in this forum. It's quite addictive! I've recently become aware of the importance of planting natives in my yard and am in the process of replacing:
Japanese Barberry (Berberis thunbergii)
Japanese Knotweed (Polygonum cuspidatum)
English Ivy (Hedera helix)
Asian Bittersweet (Celastrus orbiculatus)
Fragrant honeysuckle (Lonicera fragrantissima)
Multiflora Rose (Rosa multiflora)
Tree-of-heaven (Ailanthus altissima)

I have a lovely mulberry tree in the back and am curious if it is the native Red Mulberry (Morus rubra) or one of the non-natives, White Mulberry (Morus alba) or Black Mulberry (Morus nigra). Does anyone know how I can tell?

Welcome to DG! Glad to have you.

Very simple way to tell the difference. Feel the undersides of the leaves. Tell me if they are fuzzy or smooth. You can look at them too. Look for any hairs along the veins or the entire underside.

I've been removing all of the species you listed above except Ailanthus but I could toss in about 20 more. Misery certainly loves company when removing these plants. I did remove all of my White Mulberry a few years ago and this year I planted back 3 Red Mulberries.

Thank you for your response, Equilibrium. I'm sure I'm not the first to say that's a great name.

Yikes, 20 more?! I thought I had more than my share, but apparently I got off easy. Have you listed your replacement plants somewhere? I'm definitely looking for ideas.

Back to my mulberry. The underside of the leaves are pretty smooth except for what appears to be a few small white hairs where the lateral veins meet the large one down the middle. I'll wait to hear from you with fingers crossed. I'd hate to remove it because the robins and catbirds love it, but I really want to go native as much as possible.

Thanks again.

I'm going to cheat and cut and paste from another post I made recently-

Yes, it does. I'm troubled because it's in a very wild area of my yard where there are nesting catbirds, robins and wrens who have been here for many years and feed heavily from the tree. Hopefully, I can find a fairly large M. rubra that will fruit right away. Another problem is that it is now very shady in that part of the yard. Hmmm, well as troubling as it is, it will be fun to figure it out.

Thanks so much for sharing your expertise!

Umm, I wouldn't destroy the tree until all catbirds and robins have fledged. I got stuck with a Russian Olive for a while because it had a Robin's nest in it. I've also gotten stuck with a few Buckthorns that were multistem formation that were supporting desirable trees. I finally girdled those and gave them happy juice and let them stay right where they were to continue on as a snag until at such time as their roots failed. The birds around here sure do appreciate a good snag.

By me, I seem to have trouble transplanting larger B&Bs. I've learned over the years that for me... smaller is better. A healthy bareroot of Morus rubra will probably be the same size in three years as a 10' B&B. They seem to establish better (for me at least) when they are just itty bitty saplings but perhaps others will comment.

Best wishes to you.

May I bother you with one more thing before you go? What is a B&B? I'm fairly new to gardening and am still learning the lingo.

Thank you for the good advice. I won't remove until after they've all fledged. And starting with a smaller tree really does make better sense. Frankly, I don't have the money for larger trees anyway!

Oh gosh, so sorry about that. B&B = Balled and Burlapped. Those nice big trees that they toss a tarp over and deliver on a flat bed.

The advice originally came from Kevin_5 to me. I had gone through a phase about 5-6 years ago where I was desperately trying to establish an American Yellowwood here. I had some sort of a truck back up here with the hugest American Yellowwood you have ever seen for around $1,500. It died within a year and a half although I babied that tree. I tried a slightly smaller American Yellowwood that was in the $750 price bracket and it bit the dust. Mind you, none of these trees went to tree heaven within the 12 month guarantee period either. I tried a few more in the $200 price bracket on my own with me planting them. Those bit the dust- oh shock. I finally pruchased itsie bitsy $9 bare roots from Reeseville Ridge Nursery in Wisconsin and voila! They lived. And, they have doubled in size and they don't even look close to exiting stage left to go to plant heaven on me. Same deal with the Red Mulberry as well as a few others. Yup, I planted a few of those a few years ago that were B&B- when one is dumb, one pays and I paid. I'll spare you the details on other B&Bs that I tried to plant here. So far, my best luck is with plants that are bare root or in 1-3 gallon pots and grown in an area that is no greater than one zone warmer than me but preferably one zone cooler. Those bare roots are affordable since I'm basically broke from screwing around with big B&Bs. Bare roots are best planted in spring.

I'll try to learn from your experience, but it'll be hard to wait several years for the berries. Perhaps I should put a few berry bushes back there to tide my birds over. Or better yet, perhaps a serviceberry. This is definitely going to take some thought.

I'd never heard of the American Yellowwood before so I checked it in the plant files. What a gorgeous tree! Has yours bloomed yet?

Thank you again for sharing your experience. Tonight I'll be looking up the meaning of "glabrous" and "catkins". lol

I feel bad. Really sorry about that too. Glabrous means no hair or smooth. Conversely, pubescent means hairy or downy. Catkins are the flowering parts of this plant and they are shaped like cylinders for lack of a better term. Gimme a minute and I'll go to the Internet and get a link to a few photos of catkins.

Morus rubra catkins-
http://oncampus.richmond.edu/academics/biology/trees/images/Morus_rubra_3.jpg

Morus alba catkins-
http://naturesongs.com/vvplants/mulberry3.jpg

Many other trees have catkins also.

My American Yellowwood (Cladrastis kentukea) have not bloomed yet. It's going to be a while on my babies.

Forgot to mention that you're definitely not bothering anyone when you ask questions and you can always go click on a member name and then click on the link that says you can D-Mail them privately if you want to ask anything you don't feel comfortable posting in a thread.
Are you familiar with this organization-
http://www.npsnj.org/

A serviceberry (Amelanchier spp.) is a very nice plant. When you see the letters spp. after the Genus of a plant that means there are several different species and the person using those letters is not specifically referring to Amelanchier arborea, Amelanchier laevis, A. humilis, A. canadensis... or any of the other Amelanchier that exist but more so to Amelanchier or rather Serviceberries in general. I planted a few more of these this year and will probably plant more next year for just the reasons you mentioned.

Here's a quick way to find out of a plant is native to your area or not-
http://plants.usda.gov/
Type in the Latin name of the plant you are interested in and then when it comes up, look for whether it is native or introduced. Then scroll down and look for the map of the plant showing range.

You appear to enjoy your wildlife. Were you aware we have a forum here called Gardening For Wildlife?
http://davesgarden.com/forums/f/backyardhabitats/all/
It's a newer forum but there are other people there who garden specifically to attract indigenous fauna (all critters from spiders to birds to snakes to frogs to insects to mammals) by planting idigenous flora (trees shrubs perennials etc.). .

Oh, please, don't feel bad! I'm excited at the prospect of learning and am grateful to you for sharing your obviously extensive knowledge! I truly believe the old adage, "There's no such thing as a stupid question." And I intend to use this forum to ask many! lol Now, I'm going to check out the links you so kindly sent. This is wonderful.

And I'll definitely check out the Gardening for Wildlife forum. I'm going native for many reasons, but the biggest reason for me is because I want to feed the native fauna with the plants that give them the best nutrients--the native flora. Believe it or not, my quarter acre in the burbs outside of Philadelphia already attracts quite a few little beasties and that makes me very happy. But, I still never see frogs, turtles or salamanders in my yard. When I was kid they were everywhere. Anyway, I'm particularly excited to check out USDA site.

Thank you again, Equilibrium.

Can I just say, "Wow!" to the USDA plant site!? I've been looking for something like this for ages. I've found plenty of sites that list natives for the "northeast" or "Mid-Atlantic" but this site breaks it down to New Jersey. Yaaahoooo!

Herps (frogs, toads, salamanders and such) are extremely sensitive to chemicals. I canceled my lawn service a few years ago and I am getting a bumper crop these days and I haven't seen any deformed frogs in a few years. Water features, no matter how small or how large, are essential to attracting the herps you want. If you build it, they will come. This fall when the home centers start clearancing their pond supplies, why don't you see if you can pick up a 200 gallon preform pond. They're not all that difficult to set up and all you'd need would be a small pump and an airstone to keep a hole in the ice over winter and a decent bio filter and that should do you. You sound like the type of person who should consider a water feature at some point in time in the future, funds allowing of course.

Sure am glad you don't believe there are stupid questions. I don't believe there are either.