The Pollard Limes of the Liauckama House

One of these two limes carries a cavity in its trunk the shape of a letterbox. They stand as a matched pair in front of the Liauckama House on the Grote Kerkstraat, and both are pollards: trees cut back to the same points, over and over. A tree answers that treatment by thickening the cut ends into knuckles and throwing a burst of young shoots off the top of them, so a pollard lime ends up short, heavy and knobbled where a free-grown lime would be tall and even. The knuckles are the tally of every cut. The building behind them is much older. The Liauckama House goes back to the second half of the sixteenth century, possibly 1580, and is now part of Museum Princessehof. The trees came far later, and the national register cannot quite decide when. Its planting band puts them at 1830 to 1840, while its own history text for this pair says they have probably stood on this spot for over two hundred years. The two readings sit a good half-century apart, and both of them are the register's. The register calls this a striking place for a tree to stand, and rates both of them fair to reasonable in condition. Nobody else has written them up, so if you know more, tell us.