Polchower Linde

Everyone assumed this was three trees. The trunk on the churchyard at Polchow stands in three parts, which matched an old planting habit in this region of setting three limes together as a Trinity, and the assumption held for generations. Genetic testing has since shown it is one individual. That single tree measured 14.40 metres round in February 2022, at chest height, which makes it the thickest tree of any species in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and one of the thickest limes in Germany. It is hollow, which is normal at that size and is also why nobody can date it: the working figure of about 800 years is hung on the founding of the church it stands beside and is an estimate, not a count. It has been a protected Naturdenkmal since 1937, and it was later taken into the Nationalerbe-Baeume project, Germany's short national list of heritage trees, which is a good deal rarer than local protection. The setting is as ordinary as the tree is not: a village churchyard near Laage, open ground, no fee and no gate, in a part of Mecklenburg where the fields run to the horizon. Walk round it before you photograph it. At that girth no single view of the trunk tells you anything useful.