Hindenburglinde

A tape measure around this lime's trunk in June 2025 read 10.85 metres, barely different from the 10.90 metres recorded in 2015 and the 11.30 metres logged at chest height back in 1988: a tree this size has stopped changing shape at any pace a human notices. Germany named it a Nationalerbe-Baum, a National Heritage Tree, in September 2022, one of only a small national list, and it stands alone beside the B305, the Deutsche Alpenstrasse, just outside Ramsau bei Berchtesgaden. Nobody agrees on how old it is. The sign on site claims 1100 years, which experts doubt; estimates from foresters and dendrologists over four decades have ranged from 400 to as much as 1000, and this page keeps the whole disputed band rather than pretending to have settled it. It was once called simply the Grosse Linde, the Great Lime, until Ramsau made Reichsprasident Paul von Hindenburg an honorary citizen in 1933 and renamed the tree after him. Its crown once spread over 900 square metres before a heavy snow load tore off the main branch in 1997; the hollow trunk has since been reinforced with masonry, and the tree keeps growing new wood over its own wounds. A path leads to it from Ramsau through forest and meadow, or you can simply pull over on the Alpenstrasse.