The Lime of Eikendermolenweg

The register bands this lime to the 1600s, which would make it three to four centuries old, decades older than the plane tree across the road that already carries Heerlen's own claim to the city's oldest tree. Unlike that plane, this lime has no local nickname, no information board and no history recorded anywhere the register could point to: only a species, a rough century and an address on the other side of Eikendermolenweg from Kasteel Eyckholt's grounds. A lime left standing for three or four hundred years usually shows it in the trunk rather than the crown: a common lime develops burrs and epicormic shoots low down as it ages, sometimes thickening into a skirt of new growth around an old, split or hollowing base, while the crown above can go on looking healthy for centuries past what the trunk alone would suggest. Whether this one shows any of that has not been recorded. The register survey this age comes from is recent, and nothing in it suggests the tree is gone, but a lime this old with no other source describing it is exactly the kind of gap a reader can close in one visit. If you have stood at this spot, tell us what you saw.