Trees of lovers: mulberry, oak, linden and briar in legend

In many traditions love that survives death takes the form of a plant. Trees that change colour with the blood of lovers, spouses turned into neighbouring trunks, branches growing from two tombs until they intertwine: these are recurring images in ancient and medieval literature, and not only in Europe. Through these plants myth offers lovers a form of vegetable eternity, visible and rooted in the earth.

The mulberry of Pyramus and Thisbe

In the fourth book of the Metamorphoses Ovid tells the story of Pyramus and Thisbe, two young people of Babylon who love each other despite their families' prohibition and communicate through a crack in the wall that separates their houses. They decide to flee and arrange to meet beneath a mulberry tree with white fruit, near the tomb of Ninus. Thisbe arrives first, but runs away at the sight of a lioness and drops her veil.

Pyramus finds the bloodstained veil, believes his beloved dead and stabs himself with his sword; Thisbe, returning, kills herself beside him. Pyramus's blood soaks the roots of the mulberry, whose fruit from then on turns dark. The tale thus explains the colour of mulberries and binds the tree for ever to tragic love. Shakespeare parodied it in A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Philemon and Baucis

In the eighth book of the Metamorphoses Ovid tells instead a story of serene married love. Jupiter and Mercury, disguised as travellers, ask for hospitality in Phrygia and are turned away by everyone except two poor old people, Philemon and Baucis. To reward them, the gods transform their hut into a temple and ask them to make a wish. The two ask to serve as guardians of the shrine and to die at the same moment, so that neither will have to mourn the other.

At the end of their lives, Philemon and Baucis see themselves covered in leaves and bid each other farewell as the bark enfolds them: he becomes an oak, she a linden, side by side. It is one of the most delicate tales in Latin poetry, in which the faithful love of a whole lifetime is rewarded with a closeness that never ends.

Branches on tombs: Tristan and beyond

A similar motif appears in the medieval legends of Tristan and Iseult. In some versions, such as that of the German poet Eilhart von Oberg, a rose grows from Iseult's tomb and a vine from Tristan's, intertwining until they can no longer be separated. In other traditions it is a briar that passes from one tomb to the other and grows back each time it is cut. The motif also recurs in many European folk ballads.

An analogous image is found in China, in the fourth-century collection of tales attributed to Gan Bao. It tells of Han Ping and his wife, separated by a cruel ruler and dead because of their fidelity: from their graves grow two trees whose branches and roots join together, and on which two birds perch and sing together.

From the mulberry stained red to the oak and linden of Phrygia, from the branches entwined over medieval tombs to the Chinese trees, these legends express the same hope: that true love may find a way to continue beyond life. Nature, in myth, becomes the guardian and witness of human feelings, and every tree in these tales preserves the memory of a couple.