What is the oldest tree in Braziūkai?
Motinėlė, a small-leaved lime standing beside the village street in Braziūkai. Sources give its girth as 8.1 to 8.6 metres, the thickest single lime trunk recorded in Lithuania. It is the only tree mapped here, published alone under the single-tree exception.
The village of Braziūkai is said to have grown up around this tree roughly 300 years ago, one of several lindens original to the site where owls once nested; it is now the only one still standing. During the 1863 Uprising against Russian rule, insurgents gathered here, with graves from the fighting still in the nearby forest, and up to seven people could hide inside the tree's hollow, watching the countryside through an opening near the top. That hollow was later filled with concrete, and locals have long hung crosses and dated plaques on the trunk; a small cross remains fixed there today. Its exact girth is unsettled: the state cadastre gives 8.10 metres, a separate record claims 8.4, and the Lithuanian Arboriculture Centre's own 2018 page gives 8.60. All agree it is the thickest single-trunked lime trunk in the country. The state register describes the tree as past its natural maturity, with cavities and some fungal traces near the base, but tended, fenced and still alive.
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