Crimean Linden

It is a hybrid raised in cultivation around 1860, small-leaved lime crossed with a Caucasian relative, chosen for glossy dark leaves and a tolerance of compacted, polluted city ground that its parents do not share, which is why it turns up on streets and in parks rather than in forests. Rotterdam's stands on the Parklaan, one of a small planting spree that followed Queen Wilhelmina's 1898 coronation. Manchester's is a cluster in a Didsbury park that the Collins Tree Guide's own author called of national importance, though nobody has measured or dated it in print. In Leeuwarden you walk past one, planted in 1954, on the way into the public library through the gate of the old prison. Heidelberg's has been protected since 1986 for reasons its register never explains.