The Dicke Linde of Asbeck

The Dicke Linde of Asbeck measures 10.47 metres round, and part of the reason is that it is no longer one trunk. Lightning split this large-leaved lime and left a big hollow in it. What stands now is a split trunk, possibly two stems grown together, so the figure measures all of it rather than a single bole. Either way it is the thickest tree on this page by a wide margin. Since the 1980s steel rods have held the trunk together and wire ropes have held up the crown, which still reaches about eighteen metres. The village has more than one name for it: the split lime, the court lime, the dance lime. Those names carry the stories. One says the Lords of Asbeck once laid a plank floor in its branches and held feasts up there; another says a free court sat beneath it. Both are tradition rather than record, and nobody has found the paperwork. Its age is disputed by about a century. The tree register that measured it in 2022 says around 500 years. The municipality of Legden says about 600. Take the range. A small wayside shrine showing Veronica with her veil stands under the tree, at the edge of the village on Lindenweg, a quiet residential street. Asbeck is in Legden, in the west of the Münsterland, with no railway; come by bike or car.