The Pilsudskiego Lime

Krakow did not put this lime on its register of natural monuments until December 2013, by which time it had been standing on ul. Pilsudskiego for well over a century. Nothing records the planting. What exists is a tape measure: 339 centimetres round. That number can be read here, because two other small-leaved limes on this page come from the same register and were dated the same way. Krowoderska is 402 centimetres and reads as 130 to 175 years, Tarlowska is 259 and reads as 85 to 115. Slotting 339 between them gives roughly 110 to 150 years, an estimate taken off a trunk rather than a birth date, and the width of the band is the honest shape of that arithmetic. Three lime species stand on this page, so it is worth knowing which one you have. Small-leaved lime carries the smallest leaf of the group, heart-shaped and blue-green underneath with rust-coloured tufts of hair in the vein angles. The silver lime on ul. Kosciuszki flashes white undersides in wind, and the large-leaved lime on ul. Daszynskiego has a bigger leaf, soft with hairs. It stands on the way down to the Blonia, about seven hundred metres from both the Straszewskiego Ash and the Kosciuszki Silver Lime, so it joins a loop rather than making a trip of its own.