The Lime of Macharen Church

A lime planted in the 1830s stands in the middle of a road junction in Macharen, inside a raised, heart-shaped tree pit. The Sint-Petrus-Bandenkerk stands behind it. The national register of monumental trees puts its planting in the decade 1830 to 1840, which makes it somewhere between 186 and 196 years old. It is the 'Pallida' form of the common lime, 3.5 metres round and 17 metres tall by the register's figures, which carry no measurement date. Nobody wrote down why it was planted, or by whom. The register's history field says simply 'unknown', and the church behind it is no evidence either way. What the register does record is a tree that has been looked after. An inspector in January 1994 found a lot of dead wood and asked for it to be cleared and for the ground around the roots to be studied. At the 2023 visit the tree stood in its raised tub on a bed of wood chips, still listed as monumental. It was not the only registered lime in the village. A second one, at the primary school De Linde on Hoogstraat, is recorded as dead, so this is the one to come for. Macharen is a village in the municipality of Oss, about eight kilometres from the town. If you know why this lime was planted, tell us.