What is the oldest tree in Reinborn?
Reinborn's only mapped tree, and its oldest, is the 1000-jahrige Linde, a large-leaved lime measured at 14.34 metres round and estimated at somewhere between 700 and 1,000 years old, despite its popular name. It stands on the Kirchberg beside the parish church and cemetery in Reinborn, a hamlet of Waldems.
Fourteen point three four metres around puts this among the thickest lime trees recorded in Germany, but the name is the least reliable thing about it. Reinborn calls it the 1000-year lime and the municipality repeats the figure on its own tourism page, yet nobody has dated the wood. Baumkunde's dendrological estimate is 700 to 1000 years; a separate reading of its growth suggests germination between 1200 and 1500, nearer 500 to 800 years. What you actually meet is a tree in three pieces: the old stem has split into three trunk sections, carried by a steel column driven up the middle and cables out to the limbs. At 17 metres it reads as broad rather than tall. The ironwork is deliberate care rather than neglect, and the tree has been protected as a Naturdenkmal and Baumveteran since 1928. It stands on the Kirchberg in front of the cemetery, beside the church, probably once a Gerichtslinde, one of the trees a village held its court under. Free and public, in the small hamlet of Reinborn in the Taunus hills; reachable by car, with no rail connection nearby.
See more themed collections of remarkable trees.