The Lime of Unterlappach

Almost everyone in the west of Fürstenfeldbruck county knows this tree as the thousand-year lime. That is what the Münchner Merkur called it in December 2014, in a report that also described it as several hundred years old; the Baumkunde tree register gives its age as 250. Take the thousand years as a local name, not a date. It stands alone on a rise beside the road from Unterlappach to Rottbach, a small-leaved lime 5.65 metres round when it was measured in October 2021, and 18 metres tall. One side of the trunk is hollow, and cables hold the crown together. That hollow nearly finished it. In the night before 23 December 2014, someone put a firework inside the trunk and lit it. The hollow worked like a chimney and the tree burned fiercely from within, until a man from Maisach saw the flames at about twenty past midnight. Fire crews from Maisach and Rottbach put it out and kept watch, because embers were still glowing inside the wood. The newspaper's photograph showed the inside burnt pitch black. The lime came through. Baumkunde's visitors photographed it in 2021, 2023 and April 2025, and list it as vital, fire damage and all. It is a protected natural monument. Small-leaved limes flower late, in July. From Munich, take the S3 to Maisach, then walk about three and a half kilometres north.