Illinois Everbearing

Illinois Everbearing is the most widely planted named mulberry in North America and the benchmark against which other hybrids are judged. It is a natural cross between the native red mulberry (Morus rubra) and the introduced white mulberry (Morus alba), discovered by Peter Glaser in 1947 on Wabash River bottomland in White County, Illinois, and released commercially in 1958 by Burgess Seed and Plant Co. of Michigan. The cultivar takes its name from its home state and from its unusually long harvest window, which runs from early summer well into early autumn rather than concentrating into the two or three weeks typical of seedling mulberries. Fruit is large, slender and effectively seedless, which is a large part of why it converted so many gardeners who had written mulberries off as gritty. It is grown across an enormous climatic range, from Zone 4 in the upper Midwest down into the Gulf South, and it is a staple of permaculture food forests because it fruits young and demands almost nothing.