The Drahoslavice Linden

The official record fixes this tree's position by the village weighbridge. It grows about ten metres from the váha at the eastern edge of Drahoslavice, a hamlet of a few houses on the road to Přídolí, which is a modest address for a tree of this size. The lime here runs to 32 metres tall and 5.13 metres round, one of the largest small-leaved limes anywhere near Český Krumlov, and the state has protected it since December 1990. The lime is the Czech national tree, planted at crossroads, chapels and village greens all over Bohemia, and usually planted to mark something: a boundary, a coronation, a peace, a birth. Nobody wrote down what this one marks, if anything. It stands where the settlement ends and the fields start, and the road has been routed past it rather than through it. By every description on record it stands in the open beside route 1572, with no fence, yard or gate between the tarmac and the trunk, though nobody has walked out to confirm that on the ground. Drahoslavice is about 2.4 kilometres from the old town, roughly half an hour uphill on foot and a few minutes by car or bike. Its age is not known. No source gives one, so if you have a figure for this lime, or a tape measure, tell us.