The Kaiserlinde at Schloss Burg

Members of a religious order pruned this lime into a room. Over generations they trained its branches into a living bower with a hut-like platform inside, reached by a ladder, and climbed up there to pray the breviary out of everyone's way. The tree stood at the centre of the Catholic rectory garden at Schloss Burg, which was a far larger garden then than the open ground it occupies now. The shaping has consequences. Nobody publishes a girth for it, because there is no ordinary trunk to put a tape around: German Wikipedia states outright that the circumference cannot be measured meaningfully on a form this irregular. Age is given as roughly 250 years, inside a band of 200 to 300. Which lime it is has not been settled either. German Wikipedia calls it a Tilia x europaea 'Pallida'. The Naturpark Bergisches Land calls it a Tilia cordata. We publish it as a lime and leave the species open; if you can settle it, tell us. Since 1952 the tree has belonged to the cable car company. It stands beside the mountain station of the Seilbahn Burg, outside the ticketed part of the castle, and Solingen coordinates care work on it roughly every three years. It is natural monument number 51 in the city's 2007 ordinance. Free, at any hour, and you can arrive by cable car.