I asked this as sort of a bonus question in my prune-the-shrubs thread, but it never got answered and I was thinking it might do better in its own thread. I’ve got guys working at the house right now that are taking out nasty little foundation-screwing-up volunteer seedlings, but I need to know if this thing is going to do anything pretty or if it’s just a big green weed:
Here’s a closer picture:
I’ve been trying to figure it out myself but for some reason I have the hardest time identifying anything that hasn’t got flowers on it! One leaf looks a lot like every other leaf to me.
Will it do anything pretty? Well, if you have a fruit-bearing one, you’ll get a nice purple slick on the ground below it, along with plenty of bird droppings. Yummy berries though. If no fruit, then it’s going to be a nice shade tree, if a little close to the house. It doesn’t so much have flowers as weird fuzzy caterpillar-looking things.
Also, mulberry trees are good for silk worms, just in case you ever had an unrealized dream of being a silk farmer.
It’s pretty much right up against the house; is this thing going to endanger my foundation? Do they all grow as high as mentioned in that link, or might I have a dwarf variety? (In other words, if it’s going to get a lot taller should I go ahead and get rid of it?)
Mulberrys are quite variable in size. Some grow bushy, and only 8-10 feet tall, while others develop strong trunks reaching 30 feet or more. It’s usually considered a weed tree, so unless it produces buckets of berries for yummy pies next year, I’d cut it down.
