The Gschirrnlinde of Eugendorf

Lightning has hit this tree more than once, and the bark still carries the marks. The Land Salzburg register, which protected the Gschirrnlinde as a natural monument in 1985, describes it as a single tree that dominates the landscape, standing completely free on a gentle meadow hill, and records the lightning scars on its bark. A lone lime on a rise is what a storm goes for, and this one has kept standing anyway. It takes its name from the Gasthof Gschirrnwirt beside it, and the spelling wanders: Gschirrnlinde, Gschirnlinde and Geschirrnlinde all turn up. The setting does most of the work. The tree has its grassy rise to itself, with a farm track running past and the Alps behind, and from the track the whole broad, rounded crown reads at once. It stands in a farm meadow rather than a park, and nobody has told us the grass is open to walk on, so look from the track. A photograph taken in April 2025 shows it still standing. Eugendorf is about 12 km north-east of Salzburg, roughly half an hour by regional bus, then a short walk to the inn. Almost nothing else is on record. Nobody has published its age, its girth or its height, and the register calls it only a Linde, without saying which lime. If you pass with a tape measure, or can tell the leaves of a small-leaved lime from a large-leaved one, tell us what you find.