Franzosenlinde (Bargischow)

Local tradition says French soldiers stood watch inside this trunk and tapped their beer from it during the Napoleonic wars, which is where the name Franzosenlinde, the French Lime, comes from. The trunk can carry the story. It is hollow, roughly two metres across on the inside, and splits about four metres up into several heavy limbs. How thick it is depends on who did the measuring. The dendrological register that last visited in April 2024 and found it in vital condition records 7.85 metres round from a 2016 tape, while the village's own account rounds it up to about ten. Age runs the same way. Local reckoning says at least 500 years, growth-rate estimates say 400 to 500, and a further tradition dates the planting to 1124 at the hand of the missionary bishop Otto von Bamberg, which no source has ever managed to show. What is certain is that it was already old when Swedish, Prussian and French armies took turns crossing this corner of Pomerania. It stands on open ground beside Bargischow's squat fieldstone parish church east of Anklam, and the village names it among the few things worth stopping for. The German Dendrological Society lists it among the country's champion trees.