The Collmer Linde

Justice for the Meissen region was handed down under this lime. The green beside the small Romanesque church at Collm was in all probability the Dingplatz, the assembly site where the court sat, more than 800 years ago, and the tree on it is the tree that was there. Saxony calls it the oldest linden in the state. People here have said a thousand years for the better part of a century, but a forestry botanist's assessment puts the real figure nearer 800, so the honest band is 700 to 900 and the millennium stays a habit rather than a measurement. Arborists went over it properly in May 2022. Their inspection recorded vigorous secondary stems, documented new growth and a population of long-eared bats living in it, and what came out of it was a plan for future crown maintenance rather than removal. That October the trunk measured 11.05 metres round at 1.3 metres, and on 22 October 2022 the tree was declared a Nationalerbe-Baum, one of the federal register of Germany's most outstanding specimens. Its recorded height wanders between 15 and 32 metres depending on the year, which is what repeated crown work does to a number rather than a sign anybody miscounted. It stands about 25 metres now. The tree is on the churchyard green at the centre of the village, on a public square, free and open.