Black Beauty

Black Beauty is a true Morus nigra distributed through Dave Wilson Nursery and now carried by One Green World, Raintree, Planting Justice and most specialist fruit nurseries. It was selected for flavour and for a naturally compact frame rather than for size or speed, which puts it in a useful niche: gardeners who want the depth of a genuine black mulberry without inheriting a 30-foot tree. The fruit is large and glossy, comparable to Persian, and the flavour is the dense, wine-like profile that makes Morus nigra the connoisseur's mulberry. Unlike the alba hybrids it will not fruit in its first season, taking two to three years to come into bearing, but the wait buys a much better berry. Reported yields of 15 to 25 pounds from a mature tree are more than adequate for a household.