Here we go round the mulberry tree

Familiar from the famous nursery rhyme, the mulberry tree is so prized for the silkworms that feed on its luscious fruit that, long ago, the Chinese would execute anyone exporting a specimen

- Ian Morton

IF medieval England had wool, France had silk. Across the Channel, people had been weaving imported silk thread since the 11th century and, in 1466, the then King, Louis XI, ordered a new industry set up in Lyon, staffed by Italian weavers, in a bid to dominate European silk-cloth manufacture. The city duly became the silk capital of the Continent and, towards the end of the 16th century, the reigning French monarch, Henry IV, emphasised his country’s prominent role in silk production by establishing mulberry groves for the domestic breeding and feeding of silkworms.

In London, a peeved James I responded with a rival plan to breed ‘English’ silkworms. In 1607, he bade his Lord Lieutenants order landowners across the country to plant mulberry trees. Some 100,000 saplings were brought from the Netherlands and made available at three farthings a plant or six shillings for 100. The King also planted his own four-acre mulberry plot in what is now the north-west corner of Buckingham Palace garden, as well as establishing a silkworm nursery and mulberry garden at Greenwich Palace. Alas, despite the royal edict, the scheme foundered, partly because of untutored silkworm breeding and partly because of some viciously cold winters in which even the Thames froze over.

The tree variety the King chose to import may have also made matters worse. Silkworms prefer the white mulberry Morus alba, whereas the English project involved