The Balliol Black Mulberry

Almost nothing is left of this trunk, and the tree still fruits plenty. Balliol's black mulberry is down to a few thin slivers of its original wood, hollow and mostly collapsed in the south-east corner of the Garden Quad, yet the mulberry surveyors who visited in November 2023 found it in leaf and bearing fruit. A notice beside it says it was planted around 1609, as part of James I's attempt to give England a silk industry by planting mulberries for silkworms. The college claims it as the oldest black mulberry in Oxford, planted somewhere between 1609 and 1611. That date is the college's claim, and no planting record has been published to back it. Merton College has a black mulberry said to be of about the same age, so the city's crown is not settled. If the date holds, the tree was some thirty years old when Charles I made Oxford his capital in the Civil War. It has also made sure of its future. Balliol has five mulberries, and the four younger ones, two elsewhere in this quad and two in the Fellows' Garden, are said to be scions of this tree. One of its trailing branches appears to be rooting where it touches the ground. The college is open to paying visitors most days.