I have 5 different mulberries: persian, pakistan, white, weeping and oscar. I would say the persian has the best flavor. Mulberry, a bit of blackberry and with the acidity of pomegranate. It is sweet, juicy and the acidity adds complexity to the flavor. That said if I had to pick one it would be the pakistan mulberry. Even though the persian has better flavor the pakistan, the pakistan is still a very tasty fruit but the fruit is bigger and the tree has more fruit than the persian. The fruit is much easier to eat than the persian. The fruit itself is easier to pick and doesn't bleed or very little. The persian seems to explode when touched making it a messier fruit to eat and is harder to pick off the tree. I would suggest using a small scissors to cut off at the base if there is room to make a cut to minimize the bleeding. The weeping is good but taste more like the common mulberry that most people had when as a kid. The white mulberry, I am referring to the color of the fruit, is the sweetest and not much complexity. The taste is like brown sugar and vanilla. Still a fun fruit to eat. I haven't tried the oscar yet but hope to this season. I heard some saying that this a very tasty fruit and prefer it over the pakistan. This mulberry can be eaten at different stages. Tasting more like a raspberry when it is red and tasting the best when it is fully ripe. Parker25mv I would say the main reason it is not sold in store isn't because of the flavor but the fruit itself is rather delicate and doesn't keep very well. From my experience most mulberries that people had as a kid eat non-cultivated mulberry which the flavor can be just okay far as fruits go. Blackberries you get at the grocery store keep very well but don't taste that good because they are picked too early. If you haven't already, try some of the cultivated varieties such as the persian, Illinois everbearing, or pakistan . You may understand the hype some people have with this fruit.

The old Shangri La here in Texas has fruit for the full month of April during normal local weather. When the berry color still has a slight maroon trace that has not yet blackened, the tartness is stronger. As long as the berry is firm, black, and shiny it is well balanced sweet/tart like roadside blackberries. Later when the shine is gone and a flat black color remains, they are sweet enough but have lost most of the flavor......The optimum maturity for enjoyably eating the Pakistan berries is when the individual round fruit cells are fattest and the berry juice has permeated through the cell skin so the fruit feels slightly sticky to the touch. Eating them before that point in time is good, but not 'goodest'. Regretfully, the full length green stem inside has the 'green grass' chlorophyll taste, so that prevents a purest berry flavor. I pull the stem out chewing on the fruit cells. The Paks also produce here for the full month of April.

Does it have a straight trunk and is there a bulge where the crown meets up with the trunk? Like one part of hte plant, enveloping another? If so, it's a grafted tree. The base is not the same as the top portion of the plant. The base may be a simple mulberry tree but do be careful if you are considering to grow the bottom part as regular mulberries can grow to sizes of gigantic proportions. Here;s a link to a photo of a typical grafted mulberry standard. http://www.tree-mendus.ca/Mulberry.jpg Many garden stores will sell many forms of standards that are really grafted to trees of similar species. Like apples to apples, pea shrubs to pea shrubs, lilacs to lilacs, etc... To be certain, check for hte graft union portion. That is the area that requires most winter protection because once that area is injured either by water seeping in, or an insect burring in, fungus, etc.. it will kill off the top portion of the plant. Also with any grafted tree, there will always be situation where the bottom part will try to grow more branches or trunks. It's important to suppress these growth because it takes nutrients away from it's head. It's akin to Frankenstein.

If you are referring to the mulberry tree, beware. They sucker fiercely and quickly become invasive. You must choose carefully.