A note on doubly stochastic graph matrices

A sharp lower bound for the smallest entries, among those corresponding to edges, of doubly stochastic matrices of trees is obtained, and the trees that attain this bound are characterized. This result is used to provide a negative answer to Merris' question in [R. Merris, Doubly stochastic graph matrices II, Linear Multilin. Algebra 45 (1998) 275-285].