The White Mulberries of the Passage de Milan Gate
A pair of white mulberries flanks the Passage de Milan gate into Parc d'Egmont, one on each side, thick enough that the region's own tree inventory ranks the pair among the eighth-thickest of their species anywhere in Brussels. White mulberry is a different tree from the black mulberry Brussels already protects at the Botanical Garden: paler bark, sweeter and blander fruit, and a species grown across Europe for centuries not for eating but for its leaves, the only food silkworms will reliably take. Neither tree has a documented planting date. What is certain is the pair itself, planted close enough to read as a matched set marking an entrance rather than as two unrelated trees that happened to end up near each other, and a trunk girth of 130 centimetres each that puts them well past a garden sapling's age. Mulberries fruit in July, dark and staining when ripe, and a public park pair like this one rarely gets to keep its harvest: birds strip a mulberry fast. Free, on the same lawns as the park's two Turner's oaks and its ginkgo.
In fruit
June to July: pale sweet fruit, the leaves that fed the silk trade
The line is our estimate of how much there is to see, not a measurement. Typical for this species where this tree stands; exact weeks shift with the year.
Parc d'Egmont, flanking the Passage de Milan gate, 1000 BrusselsYou can recognise them by a matched pair flanking the Passage de Milan gate, each trunk 1.30 metres round. They stand on the same lawns as the park's two Turner's oaks in Parc d'Egmont.
Free, public park, open daily 08:00 to 20:00
Metro to Louise, about 5 minutes on foot through the Boulevard de Waterloo entrance
Sources
Where the facts on this page come from.