Those persons who obtain their ideas of trees mainly from the specimens they can see in suburban roads and gardens are in danger of getting quite a false impression of the Lime. It is a long suffering, good-tempered tree, and like human individuals of similar temperament, is subjected to shameful treatment. The suburban gardener who has a row of Limes to trim uses the saw, and amputates every arm close up to the shoulder, so that when the season of budding and burgeoning arrives the row of Limes will look like an upward extension in green of the brick wall. Such are the atrocities upon which Suburbia has to base its ideas of one of the most imposing of trees.
The Large-leaved Lime, growing in park-land or meadow, with its roots deep in good light loam, and its head eighty or
ninety feet above, is quite another matter. Such a tree is a thing of beauty, and one can stand long at its base looking up among the wide-spreading limbs so well clothed with leaves of fine texture and tint. The girth of such a specimen at four feet from the ground would be about fifteen feet. Larger individuals have been recorded, up to twenty-seven feet.
There are three kinds of Lime in general cultivation in this country, but the differences between them are not great. They are the Large-leaved (Tilia platyphyllos), the Small-leaved (T. parvifolia), and the Intermediate or Common Lime (T. vulgaris). The last-named is generally admitted to be an introduced kind, and it is the one most commonly planted. Respecting the claims of the other two to rank as natives, there has been some difference of opinion among authorities. The Small-leaved Lime, which does not occur in woods north of Cumberland, was regarded by Borrer as a true indigene, but H. C. Watson considered its claims as open to doubt, though he had no such doubt of the Large-leaved Lime, which is only growing really wild in the woods of Herefordshire, Radnorshire, and the West Riding of Yorkshire.
All our Limes have similar straight tall stems, clad in smooth bark, and with a similar habit of growth. They are trees that demand genial climatic conditions for their proper development, and in consequence they do not put forth their leaves until May. The period of their leafy glory is comparatively short, for they are among the trees that lose their leaves earliest in autumn, after having been for a few days transmuted into gold. The leaf of the Lime is heart-shaped, with one of the basal lobes larger than the other, and the edges cut into saw-like teeth. There are slight differences in those of the three species, which will be indicated below.
In its floral arrangements the Lime differs from the trees previously mentioned in that it has distinct sepals and petals, an abundance of honey, and strong, sweet fragrance as of
Honeysuckle. Unlike them, it does not trust to so rough and ready an agent of fertilization as the wind, so that it waits until its boughs are well clothed with leaves before putting forth its yellowish-white blossoms. These are in clusters (cymes) of six or seven, the stalks of all arising from one very long and stouter stalk, which is attached for half its length to a thin and narrow bract. Individually regarded, the flowers will be found to consist of five sepals, five petals, an oval ovary with a style ending in a five-toothed stigma, and surrounded by a large number of stamens. The stamens discharge their pollen before the stigma of that flower is fitted to receive it, so that cross-fertilization is ensured by the visits of the innumerable bees that visit the flowers for the abundant nectar they contain, and which the bees convert into a first-rate honey.