King James / Chelsea Mulberry Trees

Chelsea Mulberry Trees AKA King James I's Mulberry

One of the most popular Mulberries, with large, dark red to black fruits that are full of tart and sweet flavour: superb eaten straight from the tree, and can also be used in jam and various other recipes.
Chelsea is a self-fertile tree, cropping around August time. It's a precocious cropper (starts fruiting from a young age) and with maturity will yield excellent crops.

The large, heart shaped leaves are lush green, turning mellow yellow in Autumn. The fluffy catkins in spring add to the ornamental value, and old trees develop lovely gnarly, twisting branches. Their maximum height is 8 to 12 meters, but that will take a fair few decades. 

We also grow wild black mulberry trees.

• Great cropper
• Dark red-black fruit
• To 8-12m
• Crops in August
• Self fertile
• A piece of British history!
• RHS Award of Garden Merit

King James I Mulberry is very hardy and easy to grow in pretty much any well drained soil, but it needs full sun and shelter from prevailing winds, especially in the North and Scotland. 

Did You Know?

Mulberries have been grown in Britain since at least Roman times and, like so many valuable resources and technologies, were preserved by the Church, especially monasteries.

By the Elizabethan period, fresh mulberries were an essential part of an ostentatious feast, partly because they perish so quickly and don't travel well, so they could not be bought in for any price.

In 1607, King James I ordered the planting of 10,000 black mulberry trees to kickstart a British silk industry to compete with the French and Italian ones, but this never caught on, probably due to the climate (it also turns out that silkworms much prefer white mulberry trees!).
Many of these old trees are alive and well today.

This excellent cultivar was planted in the Chelsea Physic Garden "by" King James I (obviously it was Barry the gardener who did all the actual work, but that is not recorded in the history books, alas), and the original tree was in fine form until the Second World War, when it was felled to make way for an air raid shelter. 
It is rumoured that the tree was really cut down for insurance claim purposes, given that it would have been easier to install the shelter anywhere in the open ground around it.