Albersdorf maps one tree: the Fünffingerlinde, five stems grown together into the shape of an open hand, in a forest clearing a few minutes from the village. Regional legend ties the shape to a wrongly hanged wanderer; the recorded facts are a protection order from 1938 and a girth that has grown just 90 centimetres in 88 years. Published alone here because it is the destination, not because the village's research is finished.
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The Fünffingerlinde
Small-leaved Lime (Tilia cordata) · roughly 250 to 300 years · Riesewohld forest, near Odderade and Albersdorf
Five stems, one tree, and the shape of an open hand. The Fünffingerlinde grew its trunks together over the centuries into a form people read as a palm with fingers, one lower branch pushed forward as the thumb, and it has been a protected natural monument since 1938 on the strength of that shape rather than its size.
The story attached to it is a hanging. A wanderer was executed nearby for something he had not done, and the hand in the tree is said to stand for his innocence, so that nobody could tidy the case away. That is regional legend rather than record, and it is what brings most people down the track.
The measurements are modest and the growth curve is honest. Just under 4 metres round in 1932, 4.90 metres when baumkunde measured it on 21 June 2020: 90 centimetres in 88 years. The estimate is 250 to 300 years, young beside the court limes of central Germany and no less odd to stand beneath.
It grows in a clearing in the Riesewohld forest near Odderade, with benches set around it and marked hiking trails leading in. The same 2020 survey recorded its health as vital. Free, open all year, a few minutes' drive from Albersdorf and then a walk from the forest car park.
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