The Lime of the Porcelain Manufactory

A small-leaved lime grows on the working grounds of the Nymphenburg Porcelain Manufactory, Bavaria's royal china works, founded in 1747 and still hand-painting porcelain in the same rondell building today. Munich's 2021 natural monument ordinance protects the tree for being dominant and shaping the townscape, the same reasoning it gives dozens of trees across the city, and a local paper listed it among eleven giants declared natural monuments in 2011. The Nördliches Schlossrondell is one of two crescent buildings curving out from the forecourt of Nymphenburg Palace, built to house the court's workshops rather than its aristocracy. Porcelain has fired here since the manufactory moved onto the grounds in 1761, through a change from crown property to the family firm that runs it now. The lime stands close enough to the palace park's other protected trees, an oak, a beech and two more limes half a kilometre south, to make a short walk of it. Nobody has dated it. If you have stood under it, or work in the manufactory and can ask, tell us.