THE LIME, OR LINDEN TREE.
[Tilia.[K] Europæa. Nat. Ord.—Tiliaceæ; Linn.—Polyand. Monog.]
[K] Generic characters. Sepals 5, deciduous. Petals 5, with or without a scale at the base. Stamens indefinite, free, or polyadelphous. Ovary 5-celled, cells 2-seeded. Style 1. Fruit 1-celled, with 1 or 2 seeds.
The Common Lime-tree grows naturally straight and taper, with a smooth erect trunk, and a fine spreading head, inclining to a conical form. In a good soil it arrives at a great height and size, and becomes a majestic object. Thus we read that
The stately Lime, smooth, gentle, straight, and fair,
With which no other dryad may compare,
With verdant locks and fragrant blossoms decked,
Does a large, even, odorate shade project.
This beautiful tree is a native of the middle and north of Europe, and is said to have been highly esteemed among the Romans for its shade. Evelyn praises the Lime as being the most proper and beautiful for walks; as producing an upright body, smooth and even bark, ample leaves, sweet blossom, and a goodly shade, at the distance of eighteen or twenty feet. Those growing in St. James's Park, London, are said to have been planted at his suggestion. There are now many avenues of Limes in various parts of the country. At the termination of one at Colerton, Leicestershire, there is placed an urn with the following tribute to the memory of Sir Joshua Reynolds, written by Wordsworth at the request of the proprietor, Sir George Beaumont, Bart.:—
Ye Lime-trees, ranged before this hallowed urn,
Shoot forth with lively power at spring's return;
And be not slow a stately growth to rear
Of pillars, branching off from year to year,
Till they have learned to frame a darksome aisle,—
That may recal to mind that awful pile
Where Reynolds, 'mid our country's noblest dead,
In the last sanctity of fame is laid.
There, though by right the excelling painter sleep,
Where death and glory a joint Sabbath keep;
Yet not the less his spirit would hold dear
Self-hidden praise, and friendship's private tear;
Hence, on my patrimonial grounds, have I
Raised this frail tribute to his memory;
From youth a zealous follower of the art
That he professed, attached to him in heart;
Admiring, loving, and with grief and pride,
Feeling what England lost when Reynolds died.
Loudon speaks of two ancient Lime-trees at Zoffingen, on the branches of which is placed a plank, in such a manner as to enable any one to walk from the one to the other; and thus people may not only walk, but even dance, upon the foliage of the tree. In the village of Villars en Morig, near Fribourg, there is a large Lime which existed there long before the battle of Morat (1476), and which is now of extraordinary dimensions; it was, in 1831, seventy feet high, and thirty-six feet in circumference at four feet from the ground, where it divided into large and perfectly sound branches. It must be nearly a thousand years old. And at Fribourg, in the public square, there is a large Lime, the branches of which are supported by pieces of wood. This tree was planted on the day when the victory was proclaimed of the Swiss over the Duke of Burgundy, Charles the Bold, in the year 1476; and it is a monument admirably accordant with the then feebleness of the Swiss republics, and the extreme simplicity of their manners. In 1831 the trunk of this tree measured thirteen feet nine inches in circumference.
Leaves and Flowers of T. Europæa.
Botanically considered, the Common Lime is a large and handsome tree with spreading branches, thickly clothed with leaves twice the length of their petioles, cordate at the base, serrate, pointed, smooth—except a woolly tuft at the origin of each nerve beneath—unequal and entire at the base; stipules oval, smooth, in pairs at the base of each foot-stalk; flower-stalks axillar, cymose, each bearing an oblong, pale, smooth bract, united, for half its length, with the stalk; flowers of a greenish colour, growing in clusters of four or five together, and highly fragrant, especially at night. This renders them very attractive to the bees, which is referred to by Virgil, in his beautiful description of the industrious Corycian, thus translated by Martyn:—"He therefore was the first to abound with pregnant bees, and plentiful swarms, and to squeeze the frothing honey from the combs. He had Limes, and plenty of pines; and as many fruits as showed themselves in early blossom, so many did he gather ripe in early autumn."—Geo. iv. 127.
The seeds of the Linden-tree rarely ripen in Britain; this tree is, therefore, properly propagated by layers, which must be made in the nursery in autumn; in one year they become rooted so as to allow of being removed. It will grow well in any soil or situation, but if planted in a rich loamy earth, the rapidity of its growth will be almost incredible. The timber of the Lime-tree is very serviceable, and much preferable to that of the willow, being stronger yet lighter. Because of its colour, which is of a pale yellow or white, and its easy working, and not being liable to split, architects form with it their models for buildings. The most elegant use to which it is applied is for carving, not only for small figures, but large statues in basso and alto relievo, as that of the Stoning of St. Stephen, with the structures and elevations about it; the trophies, festoons, fruitages, friezes, capitals, pedestals, and other ornaments and decorations about the choir of St. Paul's, executed by Gibbons, and other carvings by the same artist at Chatsworth, the seat of the Duke of Devonshire, and in Trinity College Library at Cambridge. It is even supposed by some that the blocks employed by Holbein, for wood engravings, were of this tree. Dodsley says—
Smooth Linden best obeys
The carver's chisel; best his curious work
Displays, in all its nicest touches.
It is used by piano-forte makers for sounding-boards, and by cabinet-makers for a variety of purposes. The wood is also said to make excellent charcoal for gunpowder, even better than alder, and nearly as good as hazel, while baskets and cradles are made with the twigs of the Lime; and of the smoother side of the bark, tablets for writing; for the ancient Philyra is but our Tilia, of which Munting affirms he saw a book, made of the inner bark, written about 1000 years ago; such another was brought to the Count of St. Amant, governor of Arras, 1662, for which there were given 8000 ducats by the Emperor. It contains a work of Cicero, De ordinanda Republica et de Inveniendis Orationum Exordiis, which is still unprinted, and is now in the imperial library of Vienna, after having been the greatest rarity in that of the celebrated Cardinal Mazarin, who died in 1661. The smoothness of the Lime-tree is thus alluded to by Cowper in the Task:
Here the gray smooth trunks
Of ash, or Lime, or beech, distinctly shine
Within the twilight of their distant shades,
There lost behind a rising ground, the wood
Seems sunk and shortened to its topmost boughs.
This peculiarity of the bark has also been noticed by Leigh Hunt, in the story of Rimini:
Places of nestling green for poets made,
Where, when the sunshine struck a yellow shade,
The slender trunks to inward peeping sight,
Thronged, in dark pillars, up the gold-green light.
The leaves of the Lime-tree are also useful, and were esteemed so in common with those of the elm and poplar, both in a dried and green state for feeding cattle, by the Romans.
The other two indigenous or naturalized species of Lime are—
2. The broad-leaved, T. grandifolia. Ehrh. Flowers without nectaries; leaves roundish, cordate, pointed, serrate, downy, especially beneath, with hairy tufts at the origin of the veins; capsule turbinate, with prominent angles, downy.——Flowers in August: found in woods and hedges.
3. The small-leaved, T. parvifolia. Ehrh. Flowers without nectaries; leaves scarcely longer than their petioles, roundish, cordate, serrate, pointed, glaucous beneath, with hairy tufts at the origin of the veins, and scattered hairy blotches; capsule roundish, with slender ribs, thin, brittle, nearly smooth.——A handsome tree, distinguished from the former by its much smaller leaves and flowers: germen densely woolly: flowers in August: grows in woods in Essex, Sussex, &c.: frequent.
