The Lodewijkslinde of Vorden

This lime once stood about 30 metres tall. Wood rot took its main stem and two large limbs in 2002, and what is left is roughly 13 metres, still five and a half metres round. The name is older than the damage and less certain than either. Vorden calls it the Lodewijkslinde after a story that Louis XIV of France rested under it in 1672, the year his armies crossed into the Dutch Republic. No document ties that king to this tree. It is a local tradition, and worth hearing as one. What can be checked is the tree. bomenbieb presumes a planting in 1622 or 1623, which would put it at four centuries, and the earliest pictures of it are a watercolour from the first half of the nineteenth century and a painting from 1874. Those confirm a tree of some size standing here long before anyone alive remembers. They say nothing about the French. It grows near the coach house of Kasteel Vorden, on an estate run by Geldersch Landschap en Kasteelen. The castle is a private venue now, but the grounds are open to walkers, there is a car park, and the station is close enough to arrive on foot. A second monumental tree stands on the same estate, the Dikke Eik at nearly seven metres round, which makes the walk two stops rather than one.