What is the oldest tree in Untermerzbach?
The Hunneneiche, standing alone on a meadow at the western edge of the village, beside the Gasthaus Hunneneiche. Its age is a real disagreement: the Naturpark Hassberge says about 500 years, a dendrologist's planting-derived estimate says 220 to 420. It is the only tree mapped here, published alone under the single-tree exception.
Nobody has cored the Hunneneiche, so its age depends on which source you read. The Naturpark Hassberge, which lists it for visitors, gives about 500 years. The dendrologist Rainer Lippert, working from a recorded planting around 1700 give or take a century, puts it at 220 to 420. Both figures are published and neither has given way. What has actually been measured is less arguable: 6.61 metres round in 2014, climbing about ten metres as a near cylinder before releasing into limbs, 21 metres tall overall, and hollow inside behind a few small openings. It grows alone on open ground off the Schlossweg at the village's western edge, a legally protected natural monument since 31 July 1963. The inn beside it, the Gasthaus Hunneneiche, took the tree's name rather than the other way round, and is what most drivers coming off the B4 notice first. There is no gate, no ticket and no opening hour.
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