The Black Mulberry of Hertoghepark

Sharing Hertoghepark with Belgium's thickest black locust is a much smaller record holder: a black mulberry measured at 1.28 metres around in 1989, listed as the national champion of its species regardless of that modest girth. Mulberries simply do not grow thick trunks the way oaks or planes do, so a champion mulberry looks unremarkable standing next to almost anything else in the same park, its record coming from being the best example available rather than from raw size. The species has a long history in gardens like this one: black mulberry was planted across Europe for centuries wherever someone hoped, usually in vain in this climate, to raise silkworms, and even where the silk trade never took off the trees stayed for their fruit, staining hands and pavement a deep purple black every late summer. This one has stood through the same garden district history as its more imposing neighbour, part of the Leikwartier laid out from 1547 and consolidated into today's protected city park in 1974. Its precise planting date is not recorded, only that it has held its national champion title since at least the 1989 measurement that put it on record.