The legend attached to this lime has an arithmetic problem. Duke Tassilo III is said to have slept beneath it in 753 and founded Kloster Wessobrunn on the strength of the dream. The duke is real, the monastery is real, and the tree is several centuries too young for either. The German Dendrological Society puts it at 700 to 900 years, read from the structure of the stem rather than from any record, and the sleeping-under-the-tree part is treated as a later embellishment of the founding story rather than history. The trunk needs no legend. It measures about 14 metres round, the third-largest lime girth recorded in Bavaria after the Wolframslinde and the Kasberger Linde, under a crown roughly 27 metres across. Height is where the sources part company, ranging from 17 to 25 metres, which is what happens when a tree this broad gets measured by different people in different decades. It grows against the wall of the former monastery, signposted from every approach in the village. One source wonders whether it went in around a rebuilding of the abbey in the 1280s, but nobody has a planting date for it; if you know of one, tell us. Bavaria protected it as a Naturdenkmal in 1980, and in October 2023 it was made a Nationalerbe-Baum, a national heritage designation kept deliberately short. You can no longer stand directly under it. The path was moved a few metres out to keep feet off the root plate.
In bloom
Scented pale yellow flowers in June, loud with bees
The line is our estimate of how much there is to see, not a measurement. Typical for this species where this tree stands; exact weeks shift with the year.
Beside the former Kloster Wessobrunn monastery wall, Wessobrunn, Bavaria, GermanyYou can recognise it by the trunk, about 14 metres round, the third largest lime girth recorded in Bavaria. It stands against the wall of the former Kloster Wessobrunn.
Free, on a public path in the village, signposted from everywhere in Wessobrunn. The path was rerouted and standing directly under the crown is no longer permitted, to protect the root plate; visitors view it from a marked walkway a few metres off.
In the centre of Wessobrunn village, next to the former monastery; no rail station in the village itself, nearest is Weilheim (Obb.) about 12km away with connecting bus service.
Sources
Where the facts on this page come from.
