The Mulberry of Proviantgarden

King Christian IV tried to build a Danish silk industry the way his contemporaries elsewhere in Europe were doing it, by planting mulberry trees to feed silkworms, and Copenhagen has pointed at this tree as the survivor of that venture ever since. The Danish tree register records it as a black mulberry, Morus nigra, which is the fruiting mulberry rather than the white one silkworms are raised on, so read the silk connection as a story the city tells rather than a fact anybody has proved. Tradition credits a sailor who brought it home from Asia rather than a court gardener. What the register does state is its age, as one of the oldest mulberry trees in Denmark. It stands against the south-eastern gable of Proviantgarden, the naval arsenal Christian IV began in 1603 to supply his warships, facing the Royal Library, on ground that once fronted a working harbour basin where vessels docked to be provisioned and armed. It is five metres tall and grows the way old black mulberries do, leaning and sprawling rather than standing up straight. The silk venture itself mostly failed, Copenhagen's climate never suited silkworms the way Christian IV hoped, and the street name Silkegade nearby is the closest most Copenhageners now get to the story.