What is the oldest tree in Delft?
Delft's oldest tree is a black mulberry in the courtyard of Hofje van Pauw on Paardenmarkt, planted in 1707 when the almshouse was founded and roughly 319 years old. Tree specialist Jorn Copijn identified it in 2023 as a rare subspecies likely brought to the Netherlands by the VOC.
The mulberry's age comes from the founding date of Hofje van Pauw itself, the almshouse Elisabeth Pauw endowed by testament in 1707, rather than a ring count or measured estimate. Copijn Boomspecialisten's 2023 assessment identified the tree as Morus nigra subsp. multicaulus, a subspecies not formally recorded in Europe until 1821, well over a century after this specimen was already growing in the courtyard. The most likely explanation ties the tree to Delft's own trading history rather than European botany: the Dutch East India Company traded out of India, where the subspecies originates, from 1700, and kept a chamber in Delft from 1602, making a returning VOC ship a more plausible route for the tree than any documented import. The hofje's courtyard gate on Paardenmarkt stays open to visitors during the day, though the houses around the tree are still lived in. None of Delft's other trees on this page comes near it; the next oldest, an oriental plane in the Doelentuin, was planted between 1860 and 1870, a century and a half after the mulberry.
One of Delft's trees also appears in Autumn Worth the Trip.