The Fuchsmuhle Linden

The tree listed just before this one in the same Bavarian register is gone. The Detwang linden, natural monument number 44, lost its crown in a storm on the night of 1 March 2020 and was taken down. Number 45 still stands, where the Tauber path passes the Fuchsmuhle two kilometres downstream of the town walls. What the register holds on it is a point on a map, a species word and a protection order. Linde, natural monument, and after that nothing: no age, no girth, not even which lime it is. Bavaria has protected it, so somebody with authority judged it worth keeping, and the record of the hamlet itself still describes a linden standing there, designated a natural monument, in the present tense. The file ends there. Which makes it a good tree to go and look at rather than read about. The walk out is level, along the cycle and footpath that follows the river past the old mills, and the Fuchsmuhle is a working guesthouse with the tree beside the road rather than in its yard. Small-leaved and large-leaved limes separate on the underside of the leaf and the tufts of hair in the vein angles, so anyone standing under it in summer can settle in a minute what the register never wrote down. If you do, or if you get a tape around the trunk, tell us.