The Lime of Park Morskie Oko

Warsaw has protected this lime since 27 December 1990 and has never written down exactly where it is. The register gives its address as the corner of ul. Promenady and ul. Belwederska, which is a junction at the edge of the park rather than a place inside it, and the city's own parks department gets no closer: its guide to Park Promenada-Morskie Oko says only that a monument small-leaved lime grows near the pond. So the pin here marks the way in, not the trunk. Come in from Belwederska, keep the water on your side and look for the big lime above the bank; the hunt takes a few minutes and the park is worth them. The ground it grows on was Princess Izabela Lubomirska's private garden in the 1770s and only became a public one in 1845, when the banker Franciszek Szuster bought the estate and opened its lower half as a promenade, which is where the district's Promenada takes its name. The lime shares the park with five protected oaks by Palac Szustra, higher up the slope. No age and no girth have been recorded for it by anyone. Late June and July are when it pays for the walk regardless: the flowers open small and yellow-green, and the smell reaches much further than the tree looks capable of.