The Steinlinde of Plausig

This lime has a trunk 3.90 metres round and stands only 11 metres tall. It has been cut back hard and kept low, so what you meet is nearly all girth. Two dates compete for its planting. The photographer who put it on Wikimedia Commons in 2017 captioned it as planted in 1868, beside the parsonage. Leipzig's tree cadastre files 1861, but that is a year it gives to a whole class of old trees, not a record of this one. Nobody we have found has seen a planting document, so somewhere between 150 and 170 years is as close as it gets. Its name is a puzzle too. The city registers it as the Steinlinde, the stone lime, and no source we have read says why. If you know, tell us. Plaussig lies on Leipzig's north-eastern edge, and the lime stands in its village street beside the parsonage, by Grundstrasse 18. The cadastre measures the trunk at 1.24 metres through under a crown just 8 metres across. It has been protected as natural monument number 145 since council resolution 1522/99, and the city still lists it as standing. The ground it stands on is city property, but no source says whether the plot is open, so look from the street. Come in July if you can. Small-leaved limes flower later than most limes, and the flowers are scented.