Bamberg's protected trees are not headline giants: none carries a measured age, and the city's own register describes each in a single line. What they have is genuine public ground: a spring path climbing into the wooded hills above Wildensorg, a roadside lane, the site of a demolished manor, a riverbank a few kilometres downstream. Four trees, two neighbourhoods, one honest gap where the ages should be. If you carry a tape measure, we would like to hear from you.
0 of 4 visited in Bamberg
1
The Lindens of the Ottobrunnen
Small-leaved Lime (Tilia cordata) · Wildensorg
Two trees, one monument. Bamberg's natural monument register lists number three as "2 Linden am Ottobrunnen", a pair of small-leaved limes on the wooded hillside above Wildensorg, and protects them as a single entry rather than as two trees that happen to stand together. They face the Ottobrunnen, a spring on the Bamberger Weg, the footpath that climbs out of the city into the Berggebiet. The well carries the name of Otto of Bamberg, the bishop who died in 1139. That name belongs to the water and to the ground around it, and nothing on record attaches these two limes to him, so the story stops where the sources do.
A lime beside a well is one of the older arrangements in German village life, the tree marking the water and the meeting place at once. Whether that is why this pair is here, nobody wrote down. What is written down is the protection: both fall under the city ordinance of November 1995, amended in 2007, which means neither can be felled or cut back at anyone's convenience.
Go for the walk rather than for the trees alone. The path is wooded, the climb is short, and the pair stands at the top of it with the spring opposite.
Neither lime has been dated and neither trunk has been measured. If you get up there with a tape, tell us what they come to.
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2
The Oak of the Teufelsgraben
Pedunculate Oak (Quercus robur) · Wildensorg
The address is the Devil's Ditch. Teufelsgraben is a lane running down the Wildensorg hillside southwest of the Kaiser-Heinrich-Gymnasium, and the oak stands on the verge of it, in the open, with nothing between it and the lane. It is not a school tree. The register places it southwest of the building rather than on the site, and you reach it without passing a gate or asking anyone.
Worth knowing before you go: a second protected oak stands close by, and that one is inside a garden plot, which the register says in as many words. The tree on this page is the one out on the bank above the lane, standing alone.
It is a pedunculate oak, the species that hangs its acorns on long stalks and holds its leaves almost stalkless against the twig, which is the reverse of the sessile oak it gets confused with. Bamberg protects it as natural monument 5, under the ordinance the city passed in November 1995 and amended in 2007, so it cannot be felled or cut back at anyone's convenience.
The rest of the hillside is worth the climb with it. The Ottobrunnen limes and the lime at the old Rothof are both within a couple of kilometres on foot.
What nobody has recorded is how old this oak is or how thick. Oaks carry centuries without advertising them. If you have measured it, tell us.
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3
The Linden of the Buger Hof
Small-leaved Lime (Tilia cordata) · Bug
Its official name is a house number. Bamberg's register of natural monuments lists entry 10 as "1 Linde am Regnitzufer 1", and the address it is named after is the Buger Hof, a hotel and restaurant on the riverbank in Bug, the village district a few kilometres upstream of the cathedral. The tree is a small-leaved lime and it stands at the edge of that ground, where the garden meets the Regnitz.
So the access is an open question and it is better said than glossed over. The lime is in full view from the public path along the river, the one walkers and cyclists use to get out of Bamberg southwards, and that view is free to anyone. Whether the last few metres underneath it are open to a passer-by or belong to the terrace is something we have not been able to settle. Look from the path. Ask inside if you want to stand under the crown.
Riverbank suits a lime better than almost anywhere else in a city: water at the root, open light on the water side, and no pavement compacting the ground over it. The city has protected this one since the ordinance of November 1995.
No age is recorded for it and no one has put a tape around the trunk. If you know either number, or whether the ground beneath it is open, tell us.
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4
The Linden of the Old Rothof
Small-leaved Lime (Tilia cordata) · Wildensorg
The estate this tree is named after was pulled down in the middle of the 1960s. The Rothof stood on the Wildensorger Straße, up on the hillside west of Bamberg; the buildings went, and the ground eventually went to the city's drinking water, which is what the site holds now. The lime is still there, on what the register calls the northern boundary of the property. A boundary line with nothing left to divide.
That whole history is in the register's own wording. Natural monument 6, protected under the city ordinance of November 1995: "1 Linde am ehemaligen Rothof, nördliche Grundstücksgrenze". One lime at the former Rothof, northern property line. The farm is described in the past tense and the tree is not.
It is a small-leaved lime and it stands by the road, which is the useful part for anyone walking up: no gate, no garden, no permission. The hillside route that takes in the Teufelsgraben oak and the pair of limes at the Ottobrunnen passes within about a kilometre and a half of it, so all three fit into one afternoon on foot.
How much of the Rothof this lime actually saw is the open question. Nobody has dated it and nobody has measured the trunk. If you have, tell us.
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