The Linden of Park Jagdschloss Glienicke

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.