The Kasterlinde

A single lime tree marks the exact spot where three Brussels communes meet, and it has been doing the job since at least 1777, when the Ferraris map, the first detailed survey of the Austrian Netherlands, recorded it at the boundary point of Molenbeek-Saint-Jean, Berchem-Sainte-Agathe and Dilbeek. Later maps track it by name: an 1821 survey shows it beside a chapel demolished that same decade, and an 1858 map of Brussels and its surroundings labels the spot simply Kaster Linde. Its trunk has thickened from 2.75 metres around in the early 1900s, when the Belgian botanist Chalon first measured it for his book on the country's trees, to 3.15 metres today, growth that puts its real age comfortably past two centuries even before the documentary trail is counted. A street and a nearby cafe, In de Linde, both take their name from it. Unlike a garden specimen chosen for its looks, this tree exists because generations of surveyors needed a fixed point that would not move, and a slow growing lime, marking a boundary since before Belgium existed as a country, turned out to be exactly that.