Seasons1 of 4
By village tradition these two limes were planted in 1683 by Franconian soldiers who had just come home from the relief of Vienna, which is how they got their name, the Turkish limes. The story is carried by the village's own record and by a local history booklet written for the tree's 300th anniversary in 1983, so treat it as tradition rather than as a document, but the dates that follow it are firm and they are strange enough on their own. In 1686 the pair was trained into balls. In 1750 their branches were bound together into a horizontal ring, and that ring still runs around both trees today. By 1789 the ring had grown heavy enough to need support, so two concentric rows of grey sandstone pillars were ordered from a stonemason in Falkenstein for 40 Gulden, and they are still holding it up. The result is a piece of village architecture that happens to be alive: two trunks of 2.93 metres each, about ten metres tall, joined into one green structure on the square at Ottendorf. The regional heritage inventory of Lower Franconia lists it. Both trees were in vital condition when last surveyed, and you can walk up to them at any hour.
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Getting there
Village square, Ottendorf, a district of Gaedheim, Hassberge district, Lower Franconia, Bavaria
You can recognise it by its two trunks joined into one horizontal ring, held up on rows of grey sandstone pillars. It stands on the village square at Ottendorf.
Ottendorf, a district of Gaedheim, Hassberge district, Lower Franconia, Bavaria; a car is the practical way in.
In bloom
July, when the bound ring of branches comes into flower over the village square
The line is our estimate of how much there is to see, not a measurement. Typical for this species where this tree stands; exact weeks shift with the year.
Sources
Where the facts on this page come from. The story was written with AI from these sources, and readers who know the tree correct it.