Two hundred metres from this lime tree is the bridge where the Cold War traded people. Glienicker Brücke carried the spy exchanges between the Americans and the Soviets, and the border ran down the middle of the water beneath it. The tree stands on the eastern bank, which is to say in Berlin, though it is a twelve-minute tram ride from Potsdam's main station and a long way from anything a Berliner thinks of as the city. It is a small-leaved lime, a Winter-Linde, protected by the Land of Berlin as a natural monument under the number 6-99/B, standing in the open parkland of Park Jagdschloss Glienicke around the old hunting lodge. What that protection does not come with is information. The register gives a species, a parcel number and a place, and records no age, no girth and no note on the tree's condition, because it is a legal instrument rather than a survey. So this entry is thinner than most here, and it says so. One official source names the tree and nothing else we could find does. What that source does establish is the thing worth walking for: somebody looked at this particular lime, among all the trees in a large park, and decided it was not to be cut down.
In bloom
June to July, when it flowers
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.
Park Jagdschloss Glienicke, northwestern section, about 200m southeast of Glienicker Brücke, Königstraße, Berlin-Wannsee (Steglitz-Zehlendorf), on the Potsdam borderIn the open parkland around the hunting lodge, not in the walled garden behind the building. The second protected lime is 200 metres east, on Königstraße opposite the Wiesenteich pond.
Free, open to the public year-round. Stands in Park Jagdschloss Glienicke, the open parkland around the hunting lodge, not the fenced institute garden behind the building itself
Tram 93 from Potsdam Hauptbahnhof to the Glienicker Brücke stop, about 12 minutes, then a short walk into the park
Sources
Where the facts on this page come from.
- In the official register: Naturdenkmal (Land Berlin), no. 6-99/B
- berlin.de
- Land Berlin, Naturdenkmale: Baeume und Findlinge (declared natural monuments), no. 6-99/B