Bomlitz (river)

The Bomlitz (German pronunciation: [ˈbɔmlɪts]) is a right-bank tributary of the River Böhme in North Germany. It is just under 18 kilometres (11 mi) long and runs through the Heidekreis district in Lower Saxony.

The Bomlitz is known in the local dialect as the Bommelse, a word originally derived from Bamlina meaning Kleiner Baumfluss ('Little Baum River'), because it was the main tributary of the Böhme, formerly known as the Bama or Bumen meaning Baumfluss ('tree river'). Its present name is taken from the village of Bomlitz, whose name comes from its location on the right-angled bend of the valley known as the Bommel-Etz.

The Bomlitz rises between Neuenkirchen and Soltau in the Stichter See, which was formed during the last ice age as a Schlatt (locally: Flatt) or wind-formed, heath lake with no outlet. Today it has largely silted up, but in 1900 it was the largest natural lake in the Lüneburg Heath with an area of 6 hectares (15 acres). It has a small natural beach. As it makes its way through the almost unpopulated Riensheide heath the ditch-like brook constantly loses water into the porous subsoil and to the ground water that seeps towards the neighbouring stream of the Hahnenbach, 20 metres below it to the north. South of the point where it is crossed by the Uelzen–Langwedel railway, part of the America Line, in the area of Frielingen and Woltem in Soltau borough, and Bommelsen and Kroge in Bomlitz parish, the Bomlitz valley gradually deepens, forming a textbook example of a former cultural landscape in the natural region of the Fallingbostel loam plateaus. There is a succession of farmsteads and hamlets close to the river, each one of which lies on a route crossing the river between the country roads on either side of the valley bottom. The sometimes well-preserved and historic Treppenspeicher-surrounded farmyards are hidden in small stands of old deciduous trees, surrounded by arable fields and, further away, by pastureland. The fields were cultivated by peat cuttings or Plaggen from the heathlands on their outskirts and turned into productive Eschflur field systems. The often once boggy heathlands are today largely wooded. Abov

Flows through: Germany.

River data from Wikidata (CC0); lengths normalised to a common unit.