Raudonė Castle Lime

Seven trunks, and a legend that accounts for them in the worst way available. A metal rod sits embedded between two of the stems about three metres up, and local tradition holds that seven serfs were once chained to that rod and whipped to death, and that the lime split into seven from the horror of it. The Panemunė Regional Park repeats the story on its own pages as folklore rather than as record, which is exactly how to take it. Strip the legend away and the tree still earns the drive. The state register puts it at about 400 years old. It measures 6.2 metres round at chest height and 31 metres tall, under an egg-shaped crown 20 metres deep and 19 across that shades some 220 square metres of ground. In 2018 the Lithuanian Arboriculture Centre named it Lithuania's Tree of the Year, on a nomination from the regional park, and in 2019 it went forward to the European Tree of the Year contest. It stands about forty metres east of Raudonė Castle, beside a Soviet-era memorial to the Second World War. The castle itself is a primary school now, with a tower open to visitors for around a euro and a half; the park where the lime grows costs nothing and needs no ticket. The Nemunas runs below, and the regional park along with it.