The Krüsellinde

Altenberge put this lime on its coat of arms. The Krüsellinde is the village's heraldic tree, a large-leaved lime standing beside a wayside chapel on the Alter Münsterweg, the old road toward Münster, in what is now a residential quarter. The spot is older in the record than the tree. Altenberge's own history says vehmic courts, the secretive Westphalian tribunals, were once held here, and that a rope and a sword still lie under the lime as symbols of that justice. The tree register adds a court table. The lime itself the register puts at about 280 years, so treat the courts and the tree as two facts about one place rather than as one story. It is not a giant: 4.19 metres round in 2024 and about eighteen metres tall. What makes it worth looking at is the way the trunk breaks apart at around six metres into a crowd of separate stems, each one heading up on its own. There is a caveat, and the register says it plainly. A tinder fungus is growing on the trunk. The tree was recorded as vital in October 2024, but this fungus feeds on wood, and a lime carrying it is a lime to visit sooner rather than later. If you have been recently and noticed a change, tell us. Altenberge has no railway; a bike or a car is the realistic way out from Münster.