The Wertheimsteinpark Lime

Six metres round at chest height, and then the trunk stops being one trunk. About two metres up it divides into seven massive stems, and some of those divide again a metre higher. Part of the tree is hollow, and still the crown spreads 23 metres across. Vienna lists it as Natural Monument 828, protected in February 2012 together with three neighbours in the same park, and it is the thickest of the four by a wide margin: the park's Turkish hazel measures 3.5 metres and its service tree 2.3. The city's tree cadastre records the lime at 605 centimetres and gives no planting year, so nobody has written down how old it is, and we will not guess. The ground itself has a paper trail. In 1834 the textile manufacturer Rudolf von Arthaber built a country house here and laid out a private garden. It later passed to the banker Leopold von Wertheimstein and his wife Josephine, whose circle included the writer Ferdinand von Saar, who has a bust in the park today. Whether this lime stood in their garden, no source says. What you can say from the path is simpler. A large-leaved lime has grown into a candelabra of seven trunks, is hollowing slowly from the inside, and is very much alive. The park falls steeply toward the Donaukanal, so come in from the Döblinger Hauptstraße side and walk down to it.