What is the oldest tree in Split?
Split's oldest tree with a documented age is the Hajdukova Murva (Hajduk's Mulberry), a white mulberry planted around 1894 in the courtyard of HNK Hajduk Split's first home, Stari plac, and assessed at roughly 120 years old in a 2014 arborist survey. Đardin's Category I ginkgo and black walnut may be older still, but neither has a recorded planting date, so the mulberry holds the title by documentation rather than by certainty.
The Hajdukova Murva's claim rests on unusually solid ground for a tree nobody bothered to protect until it was already ailing. In 2014, with the white mulberry in the former courtyard of HNK Hajduk's first stadium showing real decline, Split's mayor backed a rescue effort, and the arborists who examined it put its age at around 120, meaning it went into the ground in the mid-1890s, roughly a decade before Hajduk itself existed. That figure came from a professional assessment tied to a documented restoration project, not a folk estimate, which is more than can be said for Split's other candidates. Đardin's ginkgo, rated the single most valuable tree in the city by the municipal park authority's own rarity survey, has no recorded planting date at all, and neither does the garden's black walnut. Either could plausibly be older than the mulberry. Until someone core-samples them, the mulberry's documented 120 years is the strongest number the city has, so it takes the title on the strength of its paperwork rather than a settled fact about which tree is actually oldest.
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