Innimond is a hilltop village in the Ain, roughly 900 metres up in the Bugey hills, and its lime tree stands on the church square beside the thousand-year-old Église Saint-Laurent. Tradition dates the planting to 1601, on the orders of Henri IV's minister Sully, the year the Treaty of Lyon brought the Bugey into France. Once a year the village takes its Fête-Dieu mass outside and holds it under the tree instead. Officially a Remarkable Tree of France since 2005, its hollow trunk still measures 5.8 metres round.
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The Sully Lime of Innimond
Lime (Tilia sp.) · traditionally dated to a 1601 planting, so roughly 425 years · Innimond village centre
Once a year the village takes its Fete-Dieu mass out of the church and holds it under this lime instead. The church it stands beside, Saint-Laurent, is reckoned to be about a thousand years old, which makes the tree the younger of the pair by a wide margin.
By tradition it went in around 1601, on the orders of Henri IV's minister Sully, in the year the Treaty of Lyon attached the Bugey to France. Limes stand on church squares all over the country under exactly that story, and the French sources that record the tradition also record that it is contested: most surviving Sully limes cannot be shown to date from that campaign at all, however old they plainly are. So take 1601 as what Innimond has always said rather than as something anyone has proved.
What has been measured is the trunk. In September 2015 an arborist put a tape around it at 5.80 metres at chest height and 5.72 a little higher, recorded the tree at 13.5 metres tall, and found it hollow through the middle and still viable. Four centuries of growth will do that to a lime, which is at least consistent with the date the village gives. The A.R.B.R.E.S. association labelled it a Remarkable Tree of France in 2005.
Nobody we have found names the species beyond lime. If you know whether it is small-leaved, large-leaved or a hybrid, tell us.
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