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 this is the one tree from that entire royal venture that anyone can still point to. It stands today at Proviantgarden, part of the naval arsenal Christian IV built on Slotsholmen from 1603 to supply his warships, on ground that once fronted a working harbor basin where vessels docked to be provisioned and armed. Tradition credits a sailor who brought it home from Asia rather than a court gardener, and it has stood long enough to have watched those same tall ships come and go for provisions centuries before Slotsholmen became the seat of Denmark's parliament and courts. The Danish silk venture itself mostly failed; Copenhagen's climate never suited silkworms the way Christian IV hoped, and the street name Silkegade nearby is now the closest most Copenhageners get to the story. This tree is the exception, a specimen one detailed historical account describes as having remarkable vitality, still leafing out every spring in a courtyard surrounded by 17th-century naval buildings that have long since changed jobs, now government offices rather than stores for rope and ships' biscuit.