The Lime of Landsberger Straße

Landsberger Strasse is the old road west out of Munich, the one that ran to Landsberg and on toward Augsburg before anybody thought of a motorway, and near its far end this lime holds down a corner of Pasing. Munich's 2021 natural monument ordinance protects it as a dominant tree that shapes both the street and the town around it, which is a heavy claim to make about one tree on a busy road. It lands differently here than it would elsewhere in the city, because Pasing was a town in its own right before Munich absorbed it. It still has its own Rathaus, its own market and its own centre of gravity, and the lime stands close to all three. Large-leaved lime is the German town tree by long habit: it takes hard pruning, poor soil and traffic, it throws new shoots from the base when it is cut back, and it can keep that up for centuries. Its leaves are the bigger of the two native limes, soft and faintly hairy underneath, and it flowers a fortnight or so ahead of the small-leaved lime in early summer. No age has been recorded, by the city or anyone else. Pasing keeps its history close. If a local knows this tree's, we would like to hear it.