St.-Marinus-Linde (Wilparting)

Ten metres round and twelve metres tall, this lime is almost as wide as it is high, which is what centuries of losing limbs and regrowing them does to a tree. It stands beside the pilgrimage church of St. Marinus and Anianus at Wilparting, described by its own record as one of the oldest Christian places of worship in Bavaria and built over the graves of two Irish missionaries said to have been sent here around 657 by Pope Eugene I. People have been walking to this spot for well over a thousand years. They still do on 15 November, the patronal feast, when part of the day is a pilgrimage mass held at the inn under this tree. Its own age is argued. The dendrological register, which last checked it in March 2023 and found it vital, puts it at about 1000 years off a girth measured in 2014; regional sources working from a 2012 estimate say 750. Both figures are in circulation and neither has been settled by a core, so take the range. Wilparting is a hamlet on the Irschenberg between Munich and the Tegernsee lakes, and the tree stands in the open beside the church, free to walk up to.