Gupčeva lipa

Croatia's most consequential peasant uprising is said to have started under this tree's canopy. In January 1573, tradition holds that Matija Gubec gathered his followers here before leading the Croatian-Slovene Peasant Revolt, an uprising against feudal lords across the Zagorje and Styria. It ended in defeat at the Battle of Stubičko Polje and Gubec's execution in Zagreb's main square, crowned in mockery with red-hot iron before being quartered, but it has stayed central to Croatian national memory ever since: streets, squares and a mountain peak carry his name. The tree was already substantial enough, by the story, to gather men beneath, which puts its age at 450 years and probably more; nobody has cored it to check. What is measured is the tree today. A 2021 survey put its trunk at 4.90 metres round and its height at 9 metres, a girth that would be remarkable for a lime of any documented age. It has stood under state protection since 1957, one of Croatia's earlier natural monuments, next to the parish Church of St. George in the middle of Gornja Stubica. The tree's own future is now hedged. In 2007 foresters took roughly fifty cuttings from it, and by 2011 fifty-seven grafted seedlings had been planted as Croatia's first living gene archive of the species, genetic copies standing by in case the original trunk, half a millennium into a revolt it may have watched begin, ever comes down.