The Lime of the Muttenthaler Pond

The best part of this lime is at the bottom. Munich's 2021 natural monument ordinance gives most trees on its list one clause about size or crown; this one gets a note about its feet, praising a pronounced, wide, chalice-shaped stem base along with the presence it has in the landscape beside the pond. Old limes do that. The trunk flares out at ground level into buttresses that run into the soil like poured wax, and on a big one the flare can be wider than a person can reach around. It grows at the water on Muttenthalerstrasse in Solln, at the south-western edge of Munich, where the streets are wide and the gardens are old. A lime and a pond is not an accidental combination in Bavaria. The linden was the tree villages planted where they met, danced and held court, and water and a bench tend to follow the same logic. Go and stand at the base rather than photographing the crown from across the water, because the base is what the city singled out. Age is the one thing missing: the register has no year and no girth for it, and no second source names the tree at all. Anyone with a tape measure can tell us more than the paperwork does.