THE LINDEN-TREE.
The Lime or Linden-tree is generally known among our countrymen as the Bass, and was not, before the present century, employed as a wayside tree. The old standards seen in our ancient villages are European Limes. During the past thirty years the American tree has been very generally planted by roadsides, in avenues and pleasure-grounds, and few trees are more highly valued in these situations. But the American has less beauty than the European tree, which is clothed with softer foliage, has a smaller leaf, and a neater and more elegant spray. Our native Lime bears larger and more conspicuous flowers, in heavier clusters, but of inferior sweetness. Both species are remarkable for their size and longevity. The Lime in Great Britain is a tree of first magnitude, frequently rising to the height of eighty or ninety feet, with a trunk of proportional diameter. The American species is not inferior to it in size or altitude. Some of the largest trees in Western New York are Limes.
The Lime has in all ages been celebrated for the fragrance of its flowers and the excellence of the honey made from them. The famous Mount Hybla was covered with Lime-trees. The aroma from its flowers is like that of mignonette; it perfumes the whole atmosphere, though never disagreeable from excess, and is perceptible to the inhabitants of all the beehives within the circuit of a mile. The Lime is also remarkable for a general beauty of proportion, a bright verdure contrasting finely with the dark-colored branches, and an outline regular and symmetrical without formality. When covered with leaves, it bears some resemblance in outward form to the maple, but surpasses it, when leafless, in the beauty of its ramification. The leaves are roundish heart-shaped, of a clear and lively green in summer, but acquiring a spotted and rusty look in autumn, and adding nothing to the splendors of that season. In the spring, however, no tree of our forest displays a more beautiful verdure before it acquires the uniform dark green of the summer woods.
The branches of the Lime have a very dark-colored surface, distinguishing it from other trees that agree with it in size and general appearance. The bark of the maple, for example, is light and of an ashen-gray tint, and that of the poplars a sort of greenish clay-color. This dark hue renders the spray of the Lime very conspicuous, after a shower, and in spring, when all the leaves are of a light and brilliant green; but these incidental beauties are not very lasting. The branches, being alternate, are very minutely subdivided, and their extremities neatly drawn inwards, so that in a denuded state it is one of our finest winter ornaments. The spray of the beech is more airy, that of the elm more flowing, and that of the oak more curiously netted and interwoven; but the spray of the Lime is remarkable for its freedom from all defect.
George Barnard, who, being a painter, looks upon trees as they are more or less adapted to his own art, remarks:—
“When young, or indeed up to an age perhaps of sixty or seventy years, the Lime has a formal appearance, with little variation in its masses of foliage; but let some accident occur, such as the breaking down of a large branch, or the removal of a neighboring tree, it then presents a charming picture.”
One of the curiosities of the Lime-tree that deserves notice is a certain winged appendage to the seed, which is a round nut about the size of a pea. This is attached to a long stem, from the end of which, joined to it obliquely, descends a ribbon-like bract, causing it, when it falls, to spin round and travel a long distance upon the wind. If the tree stands on the borders of a pond, where the seeds fall upon the surface, this winged appendage performs the part of a sail, and causes the seeds to be wafted to different points of the opposite shore.