Gerichtslinde Gottingen

A ducal court sat at this lime from 1241, and the ground beside it was still being used for executions in 1859. Justice was administered here from the sixteenth century until 1824. That is what a Gerichtslinde was for: a broad tree on open ground, the whole village within earshot, the verdict given outdoors where everyone could hear it. What is unusual about this one is how long the arrangement outlived the courtroom part of it. The tree stands today on a green strip beside the B3, a federal road on the western edge of Gottingen, in the Grone district. Almost nothing else about it is agreed. A sign at the tree says it was planted in the sixteenth century. The forester Hans Joachim Frohlich put it at about 300 years in 1993. German Wikipedia's own text says 400 to 500, and the Baumkunde register says 420 to 520, so somewhere between 300 and 520 years is as tight as this gets. The two sources cannot even agree on the species: Wikipedia calls it a winter lime, Baumkunde a summer lime. The trunk, at least, is measured and still growing, from 5.30 metres round in 1993 to 6.97 in 2016 and 7.14 in December 2024. It is hollow, the trunk split, sending roots down inside its own cavity, with the crown held together by cables and last pruned in 2011. Somebody is looking after it.