The Linden at U Belanských

Slovakia's thickest tree is hollow, and during the war partisans are said to have hidden inside it. The trunk runs 10.15 metres round at chest height, a figure the town of Myjava and the Slovak protected-trees record agree on to the centimetre, and it is very probably the largest girth in the country. What sits on top of it is modest: 16 metres of tree, a crown 11 metres across. This lime spent its growth on width. It stands on a side street in U Belanských, a scatter of houses in the Turá Lúka district on the western edge of Myjava, on the line between two land parcels rather than in anybody's garden. Both sources put its age at around 620 years, and both tell the partisan story, which is the one episode from all those centuries that anyone here still repeats. The paperwork disagrees mildly about when the state took an interest: the town says it was declared a protected natural monument in 1990, the protected-trees record says 1996. They agree that a conservation programme was written for it in 2002. In 2009 it came third in the national Tree of the Year competition run by Ekopolis and won 333 euros, earmarked for its own upkeep. For a tree with a cavity big enough to conceal a grown man, that is a small budget and a very specific one. It is still standing, still protected, still being looked after.