Leonstein's best-known tree has its own parking bay and bench. The Bühler-Linde is a very large, multi-stemmed large-leaved lime on the grass at a road junction, in front of the Hasengütl farm that locals also call Bühler. Its age has never been published, and its story lives mostly in one photographer's record, which makes it a tree to see for yourself.
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Large-leaved Lime (Tilia platyphyllos) · Leonstein
This lime has a signposted parking bay and a bench of its own, and almost no paperwork.
It grows on the grass at a road junction in Leonstein, part of Grünburg in Upper Austria, in front of the Hasengütl farm. Locals also call the farm Bühler or Höchtl, and the tree carries the first of those names. Photographs from May 2021 and March 2022 show a very large, broad, multi-stemmed large-leaved lime, with clumps of mistletoe hanging in its crown.
That is close to everything on record. The tree is not on Upper Austria's list of natural monuments. Nobody has published its age, its girth or its height, and everything we know comes from a single photographer's pictures and notes on Wikimedia Commons. A lime this broad standing in front of an old farm invites guesses about who planted it and when. We have no source for any of them, and if you know its story or its age, tell us.
What the species does, it does on schedule. Large-leaved limes flower in June, a little earlier than the other limes, with pale, scented blossom that fills with bees for about a fortnight.
The farm itself is private. The tree stands at the road's edge, so the view from the junction and the bench is the whole visit, and it is enough. Our pin is approximate; look for the farm at Heindlmühlstraße 1.
Photo: Christoph Waghubinger (Lewenstein) (CC BY-SA 4.0)