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Fruit & Orchards

Identifying a plant with berries

14 years ago

Hi!

I bought my thirty year old home in the fall. I'm really seeing all my plants for the first time now that it's spring here in east central PA. I've got everything identified except for one thing - a large bush with berries. The berries are similar in shape and design as blackberries.

I've put up some photo's that I just took and they can be found here:

http://unusualgoods.us/plant.html

One really odd thing about the bush is that it has different shaped leaves. Hopefully the last two photos on that page will clearly show this...

Thanks!!!!!

Paul

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Comments (5)

kiwinut
14 years ago
Mulberry. Looks more like white mulberry, Morus alba, or possibly a hybrid with red mulberry. Let us know how they taste.
grow_darnit
14 years ago
Those are mulberries. The tree must've been cut if it looks like a bush. They are quite delicious and you can make pies with them. The birds love them too, hope your car is usually in the garage, they make quite a mess:)
Grow
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Thanks everyone. They grow in my backyard and they look cultivated. They don't have thorns or anything like that. I don't have pictures of berries but if you know how red currants look like they are very close to it. May be it is some sort of hybrid of red currants and something else? I wouldn't eat them if they were wild but I assumed they were part of edible landscape the previous owners had.
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Comments (4)
Those are serviceberries (or Sarvisberry). A native small tree in the genus Amelanchier. Sometimes called Juneberry because they ripen in June. They are tasty, the birds like 'em; people used to make pies with them. Good fall color too.
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castus ~`berry's ~ help please !!!!
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Comments (5)
Vitex agnus-castus. Chaste-berry. Monk's Pepper. The flowers are a blue-lilac colour, not red. Are you sure you've correctly identified the plant? The berries which follow the flowers look almost exactly like peppercorns, the same size. You can't miss them. They begin green, then when ripe, they go brownish-grey. Each of them contains 3-4 seeds. To harvest them, all you need to do is rub the stem upwards between finger and thumb, and they just come away ever so easily into the palm of your hand. Here is a link that might be useful: vitex pix
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Berry bearing plants..clean berries or just plant?
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ooops...wrong forum...I missed the "starting from seed" tag.
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paulb104
Original Author
14 years ago
From what I can find on the net, you seem to be correct in that it's a mulberry.

What about the different shaped leaves on the same branch? Is that normal? On the second to last photo at my site, you can clearly see one leaf that is small and has a quilted look to it and right next to it a a waxy leaf with a spear head shape... ?
larry_gene
14 years ago
Must be the nature of the plant. I'm not familiar with the details of a mulberry, but many of the leaves near the fruiting nodes in your pictures appear to be small & quilted and other leaves are larger and indented.

Other plants, especially eucalyptus, have different shaped leaves on new growth versus mature growth.
kiwinut
14 years ago
The different shaped leaves on the same plant is typical for white mulberry. See link below for a good comparison of white and red mulberries.

Here is a link that might be useful: Red and White Mulberry in Indiana

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