Königslinde (Schlosspark Linderhof)

When King Ludwig II laid out the gardens of Linderhof, his smallest and only fully finished palace, the plan called for clearing most of what already grew on the site to make way for Carl von Effner's new terraces. One tree was excused. A lime already standing where the Wasserparterre would go, already old, was left in place and folded into the design rather than felled, and the terrace was built to frame it. It is still there, and it is still the name most people use for that exact spot: the Konigslinde, the king's lime. It was already around 300 years old when Ludwig spared it in the 1870s, which puts its own planting somewhere near the early 1600s, two centuries before Linderhof existed as anything at all. The trunk is hollow now, with two barred openings, and the crown is held together with cables, an old tree doing an old tree's structural work with some engineering help. A survey in April 2025 measured the girth at 5.88 metres, among the freshest measurements on record for any tree this project publishes. The palace charges admission for its interior, the grottoes and the golden dining room Ludwig built to eat alone in. The park around the Konigslinde does not, so anybody walking those gardens can stand under the one tree the king decided not to cut down.