Seasons1 of 4
Bremen's oldest tree is not really one tree. Three trunks grew together on the churchyard in front of the Horner Kirche and fused into a single mass more than four metres across, and that mass is what the city now props up: in spring 2026 a support frame was lifted in by crane, partly for the tree and partly for the people walking under it. Before there was a city district here there was a court. The medieval Thing known as the dinghe tho dem Horne met on this spot, which makes this a Gerichtslinde, a court lime, and the tree is thought to have gone in shortly after Dutch settlers built the first chapel beside it early in the 12th century. It appears in writing by 1380. Its age is argued over in the usual way, and both figures are worth having. The memorial plaque at its foot and local tradition say about 900 years, tying it to that settlement; a dendrological survey taken in August 2025 reads 600 to 700 years off a girth of 6.1 metres. Documentary dating and growth-rate dating rarely agree on a tree this hollow. Either way it was here for the Hanseatic centuries, and it is still standing on a working churchyard in an ordinary Bremen tram suburb.
From people who stood here
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Getting there
Cemetery in front of the Horner Kirche (Zum Heiligen Kreuz), Horn-Lehe, Bremen
You can recognise it by its mass of three trunks fused together, over four metres across, held up since 2026 by a crane-lifted support frame. It stands on the churchyard in front of the Horner Kirche.
Bremen district of Horn-Lehe; reachable by Bremen city tram/bus, an ordinary urban stop.
In bloom
June, when the lime flowers over the churchyard and the crown hums with bees
The line is our estimate of how much there is to see, not a measurement. Typical for this species where this tree stands; exact weeks shift with the year.
Sources
Where the facts on this page come from. The story was written with AI from these sources, and readers who know the tree correct it.