The Linden of Lipka

This lime lost a third of itself and came back looking deliberate. It grew on three trunks, one of them broke away, and the wound closed into the balanced twin-stemmed shape it carries now, with a hollow running from the base up into the crown. That crown is 26 metres across, on a tree standing somewhere between 27 and 32 metres tall. The trunk measured 802 centimetres round when it was first taped, 870 in 2001 and 905 in 2016, which ranks it among the five biggest small-leaved limes in Bohemia by girth. Its age is given as 600 to 800 years, a band nobody has narrowed, and the tree is more convincing than the number. In 2016 the Czech public voted it Tree of the Year, and it went on to take third place in the European Tree of the Year in 2017, which is a lot of votes for a tree standing on a field path in the Zelezne hory. It has been protected since 1990. Cables were fitted in the crown to hold the stems, in place as of 2020, and it is described as in good health for its age. It stands beside the yellow-marked path that runs to the Kustos family tomb, near the site of a former Gothic fortress. No gate, no ticket.