What is the oldest tree in Collm?
The Collmer Linde, on the churchyard green (Kirchanger) beside Collm's small Romanesque church. Called Saxony's oldest linden. A century of local tradition says a thousand years; a botanist's assessment puts it nearer 800, so the honest band is 700 to 900. It is the only tree mapped here, published alone under the single-tree exception.
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, recording vigorous secondary stems, documented new growth and a population of long-eared bats living in it, and the plan that came out of it was future crown maintenance rather than removal. That October the trunk measured 11.05 metres round, 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, what repeated crown work does to a number rather than a miscount; it stands about 25 metres now.
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