Vytautas Park Linden

Most tree ages on this site are estimates. This one was counted. Somebody bored a core out of the trunk and read the growth rings, which came to about 270 years, so the linden was a seedling here around the 1750s and has stood through every version of Kaunas since. It measures 5.50 metres around at chest height, 1.73 metres through the trunk, and 23 metres to the top. The crown is 18 metres deep and roughly 25 by 16 metres across, noticeably lopsided; the tree stands on a northwest-facing slope with the ground falling away at twelve degrees. The state register describes its condition as good. There is some wood-boring insect damage in the trunk and one dead skeletal branch, but no rot and no splits in the bark, which for a tree of this age is a better report than most. The setting is the surprise. This is not a solemn tree in a churchyard: it sits on the slope above Parodos gatvė inside Vytautas Park, at the edge of the Ąžuolynas oak wood, with the fairground close by and a dirt path running three and a half metres from the trunk. Kaunas city council made it a protected natural heritage object on 10 April 2008. It is fenced now, with a board beside it. Twenty-five minutes on foot from the centre, uphill into Žaliakalnis, the green hill.