The Service Tree of J.C. Jacobsens Have

The Danish tree register does not deal in compliments. Its entry for this one gives the measurements and then adds, unusually, that it is a large and beautiful tree. It has grounds. Sorbus domestica, the service tree, is a genuine rarity in Denmark: a wild relative of the rowan that grows far larger than any rowan anybody plants, and far slower. This one runs 3.18 metres round and 16 metres up, single-stemmed and healthy at the 2019 survey, standing 40 metres due north of the fountain in J.C. Jacobsens Have. The fruit is the giveaway. It comes as miniature pears and apples, a couple of centimetres long, hard and mouth-drying until frost and time turn them soft and brown. Across southern Europe they were left to reach exactly that state and then eaten or fermented into a drink. This particular tree stands in a garden laid out by the man who founded Carlsberg, which is a coincidence and nothing else; nothing in the record says Jacobsen chose it for that. The garden was his private collection until the gates opened to the public in 2009. Nobody has dated the tree, and for a species that can run several centuries that is a real gap. If a planting plan or a nursery record for this garden survives, we would like to see it.