What is the oldest tree in Giessen?
Giessen's oldest mapped tree is the Lindengruppe an der Lindbachquelle, a pair of winter limes estimated at 200 to 400 years old, standing at the source of the Lindbach spring in Lützellinden.
The oldest of these limes has been through fire twice, taken lightning and repeated storm damage, and a February 2021 survey still described it as vital, if partly hollow. Trees standing at the head of a spring lead exposed lives. There were three. One came down in a storm and two remain, joined by a young lime that NABU planted after the spring area was returned to a more natural state. The names line up neatly: the Lindbach rises at the foot of the lindens, in the district of Lützellinden on the southwestern edge of Giessen. The group is a designated Naturdenkmal, listed as landscape-defining, a rare thing for a register to say about three trees and a stream source. Nobody has dated the survivors precisely. Sources agree on a wide band, 200 to 400 years, estimated from size and structure with no planting record to narrow it. The larger of the pair was measured in May 2020 at 5.79 metres round and 15 metres tall. The spring is public and free, about nine kilometres from Giessen's other veteran trees on the far side of the city.
See more themed collections of remarkable trees.