The Zelkova of Landbohojskolens Have

This is not one tree with four stems. It is four trees that grew into each other. The university's history of Landbohøjskolens Have describes the zelkovas along Bülowsvej whose separate trunks have fused into a single crown, the result of a nineteenth-century habit of dropping several saplings into one planting hole, and the register's entry for this tree records exactly that: four stems, measured together at 7.55 metres, under 17 metres of shared canopy. So the girth is a group figure, not a trunk. What it describes is better than a trunk anyway, because the four have knitted into one another at the base and the crown above them behaves as one tree. Zelkova serrata is an elm relative from Japan, Korea and eastern China, with fine-toothed leaves and smooth grey bark that flakes to orange as it ages. The garden's own history counts its zelkovas among the old trees here, which is more than it says about most of what grows in it. One caution from the survey in June 2022: there is fungal infection in the southeastern stem. On a tree made of four stems that is a slower problem than it would be on one, but it is worth looking at when you stand there.