by Peter Coles

Back in 2016 I visited a gnarled old black mulberry standing outside Emmi’s corner shop in Colson Way, Streatham Park (SW London). A blue plaque on a nearby wall hints at links with the celebrated 18th century lexicographer, Dr Samuel Johnson, who lived for a while as a house guest of the wealthy socialite Hester Thrale, at the mansion that once stood close to this spot. I wrote about this tree and three other nearby Black Mulberries of similar age (see here) – all probably growing on the estate in the late 1700s and surviving in the gardens of villas built on the estate in the 19th century.

The mulberry tree in 2016 (left) before storm damage in 2017 (right)

Sadly, in 2017, a strong gust of wind fractured the tree. It was deemed dangerous and felled. Fortunately, the tree surgeons left the stump. 

This summer – seven years later – I returned to Emmi’s and found the ‘Dr Johnson mulberry’ a vigorous, 12-foot tall, bushy tree, regrown from suckers around the stump. 

The mulberry in August 2024

Phoenix trees

Mulberry trees (Morus species) are able to regenerate from shoots or suckers that appear around a sawn stump.  This is the same botanical process that enables coppiced (i.e. cut back to the ground every 10-15 years) trees of other species to grow new stems – turning regularly coppiced woods into ‘factories’ for producing poles for fencing, tools, broom handles, axles and countless other uses, especially in the era before iron and steel (and plastic). And it is the same process that allows a fallen or collapsed tree to regrow, so long as the original root system is still getting nutrients and water from the soil.  Also, parts of the fallen trunk that are in contact with the soil will put down roots from buds under the bark – a process called ‘layering’ – and send branches vertically, as new stems.

The collapsed and layering Black Mulberry at Groton Winthrop (Suffolk) looks like a grove,
as former branches become new trunks

In time, the connection with the original roots decays and what was once a horizontal branch will become a new, vertical trunk or stem. This is known as a Phoenix tree, after the mythological bird which is reduced to ashes by fire, only to be reborn. After several decades, or even centuries, such a ‘phoenix’ tree will look more like a grove, whereas it is, genetically, a cluster of clones of the original tree – probably sharing the same tangled roots.  In this sense, the tree is, like the mythological bird, immortal.

In my years of mulberry recording, I have seen many such trees come back from what looked like fatal injury.  This is all the more reason to leave them alone, if possible, once they fall over, or to leave a stump to sucker again if a tree has to be felled. Dotted around Britain (and indeed much of Europe) there are other examples of these layering, phoenix trees, some of them 400 years old, with another 400 years, potentially, ahead of them. Many will be found on our map  - and if you know of one that we haven't recorded yet, please add it or contact us.