Determinant of the distance matrix of a tree with matrix weights

Let T be a tree with n vertices and let D be the distance matrix of T. According to a classical result due to Graham and Pollack, the determinant of D is a function of n, but does not depend on T. We allow the edges of T to carry weights, which are square matrices of a fixed order. The distance matrix D of T is then defined in a natural way. We obtain a formula for the determinant of D, which involves only the determinants of the sum and the product of the weight matrices. (c) 2005 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.