Three lindens grow as one group here, trained and pruned together beside a historic stone table once used for village assembly, in front of Dagobertshausen's fortified church. Hollowed out by age and cut back hard and often, they are still, by the local environmental authority's own account, vital. That authority placed the group under Naturdenkmal protection in 2008, estimating the trees were already at least 120 years old at the time, which puts them past 140 today. A 2017 survey measured the recorded specimen at 1.88 metres round and 5.5 metres tall, a cultivated lime the register lists locally as "Holländische Linde", Dutch lime, rather than a wild-growing tree. The group is younger than its neighbours in Berndshausen and Hilgershausen, both a few kilometres away, but it belongs to the same practice: a Hessian village growing its meeting tree into a shape rather than simply letting it stand, so that people could gather under a canopy trained wide and low enough to shelter a crowd underneath it.
In bloom
The line is our estimate of how much there is to see, not a measurement. Typical for this species where this tree stands; exact weeks shift with the year.
In front of the fortified church (Wehrkirche), Dagobertshausen, Gemeinde Malsfeld, 34323 Hessen, GermanyYou can recognise it as the group of three limes trained and pruned together, hollowed by age. It stands before the fortified church in Dagobertshausen.
Free, no permission needed. The trees stand on an open square before the fortified church, in the middle of the village.
Rural Hessen, no train station nearby. Melsungen is roughly 15 minutes away by car.
Sources
Where the facts on this page come from.
