The Linden of Bon-Abri

The city's tree register and the city's tourist office disagree about this linden by a hundred years. Lausanne's heritage list puts it at 260 years old. Lausanne Tourisme's own walking tour, describing the same trunk on the same corner, says 160. On everything else they match, which is how we know it is one tree and not two: a large-leaved lime, 16 metres tall, the trunk 5.52 metres round on the city's tape and 550 on the tourist office's, at the point where Chemin du Languedoc meets Chemin de Bon-Abri. Nobody has closed the gap. Read it one way and this tree was already grown while Vaud was still Bernese territory; read it the other and it went in around the time the railways arrived. We are printing both numbers rather than picking the flattering one. What neither version disputes is the trunk itself, hollow, gathered, almost curled in on itself. The city's own description calls it a veteran that keeps a low profile, which is fair: there is no fence, no plaque, no path laid out to it. There is a bench, though, and a view. The tree stands on a belvedere with an uninterrupted stretch of Lake Geneva in front of it, which the tourist office rates among the best panoramas in Lausanne. If you know anything that dates this lime, tell us.