Fatal attraction
Lured by the intoxicating scent, hordes of murmuring bees will soon descend on our avenues of lime, many to meet their death. Vicky Liddell investigates the ‘tree with a thousand uses’
ANYONE walking through London’s Green Park in the middle of July will be captivated by an unforgettable fragrance. The source of this scent is an avenue of lime trees or lindens. For a few weeks each summer, they become, in the words of Richard Mabey, ‘Britain’s noisiest trees’, as hundreds of murmuring bees descend on the sweet-smelling flowers. Sometimes, the insects become so intoxicated they fall to the ground in a stupefied state.
Tilia x europaea, the common lime or linden, is a popular species in city parks thanks to its tolerance of pollution and pollarding, but its lineage is venerable. One of its parents, Tilia cordata, the smallleaved lime, dates back to the end of the last Ice Age, when it was queen of the southern woodlands—before the oak stole its crown.
The small-leaved lime is now rare and unfamiliar: where it is seen, it’s a valuable indicator of ancient woodland. Rarer still is the common lime’s other parent, Tilia platyphyllos, the large-leaved lime, which can sometimes be found in old copses and boundary banks.
Despite its name, the common lime isn’t related to the tangy citrus fruit—lime is an altered form of the Middle English lind, meaning lenient or yielding and referring to the fact that the timber is soft. Linden was, originally, the adjective.
The reasons for the decline of the smallleaved lime are still unclear, but it’s thought that the well-drained ground it prefers was the first cleared for agricultural use by early Bronze Age farmers; oak seedlings may have been protected from grazing animals as they were considered more useful. Small-leaved lime woods were still common in Anglo-saxon times and their ghosts live on in place names, such as Lyndhurst and Linwood in Hamp-shire’s New Forest. Sadly, most ancient lime woods have disappeared: examples still exist in fragmented forms in Lincolnshire and the largest is Shrawley Wood in Worcester-shire, covering some 340 acres.
Growing unfettered in open parkland, a spreading lime is a majestic sight. Its roots are deep and wide-spreading and it has a remarkable tenacity for life. As old stems collapse, new ones arise and the tree will sometimes survive in hedges long after a wood has been cleared.
The small-leaved lime growing at Westonbirt National Arboretum, Gloucestershire, is one of Britain’s oldest trees and is estimated to be about 2,000 years old. At Holker Hall in Cumbria, an ancient common lime, planted in the 17th century, has a wonderful fluted trunk and an impressive girth of 25ft. The country’s tallest lime, also a common lime, grows in the grounds of Duncombe Park, North Yorkshire, and measures nearly 154ft. Down in Kent, a 200-year-old common lime grew at Canterbury’s St Lawrence cricket ground before falling in a storm in 2005. In its heyday, it was the only tree within the boundary ropes of a first-class ground and rules were adapted accordingly—any ball hitting any part of the tree was signalled as a four and no batsman could be caught off the rebound. Stranger still are the small-leaved ‘preaching limes’ that mark the boundary between Dymock and Much Marcle, Gloucestershire. Open-air church services were held there until the 1920s, the vicar standing on a pair of old blacksmith’s bellows to give his sermon.
The dappled light of the linden tree has inspired writers across the centuries. Lying in Oxford’s long grass, Matthew Arnold dreamed of the lindens that feature in The Scholar Gypsy:
A lime is a majestic sight. Its roots are deep and it has a remarkable tenacity for life
Morris-dancing sticks made of lime are able to withstand the most spirited thwacking
Samuel Taylor Coleridge told the essayist William Hazlitt that he liked to seek out copses in the lime woods when he felt a poem was on the way as the process of breaking a path through the branches helped with the composition. In This Lime-tree Bower my
Prison, which he wrote in the Quantocks in 1797, Coleridge notes that ‘Nor in this bower, This little lime-tree bower, have I not mark’d much that has sooth’d me’. In Germany, linden flowers have strong associations with forbidden love—in the medieval poem Unter
der Linden, the only sign of the lovers’ meeting is the crushed flowers under the tree.
The ancient Romans called the smallleaved lime ‘the tree with a thousand uses’ and not without reason. Coppiced lime doesn’t splinter easily and provided hop-poles, bean sticks and fuel. It’s still used to make Morrisdancing sticks able to withstand even the most spirited thwacking.
Under the bark is a fibrous layer called bast, which was used to make baskets, rope, net, cloth and even sandals. Lime wood itself is pale and soft, doesn’t warp and has a long history in the manufacture of musical instruments and piano keys. It is well known as the wood carver’s favourite and was made famous by the late-17th-century sculptor Grinling Gibbons, whose trademark style of highly detailed botanical elements in high relief may be seen at Trinity College Chapel, Oxford, Hampton Court Palace and the Quire at St Paul’s Cathedral in London.
The young, translucent foliage is fed to cattle, but the bright-green leaves are delicious eaten raw in sandwiches or as a lettuce alternative in salads. In July, the crescentshaped bracts and star-shaped flowers may be collected and turned into a tisane, which has been used to treat conditions including anxiety, fever and hypertension.
In Europe, where the lime is commonly known as the linden, the tree is revered. German judicial cases were often heard beneath a lime tree to inspire justice, with verdicts coming back as sub tilia. In Buisles-baronnies, in the south-east of France, there is an annual festival dedicated to lime And air-swept lindens yield their scent and rustle down their perfumed showers, Of bloom
blossom or tilleul, which is harvested in huge quantities from the local large-leaved species.
Unsurprisingly, lime trees attract huge quantities of wildlife, including rare woodland species, such as the lesser spotted woodpecker, the willow tit and the white admiral butterfly. Most striking is the enormous lime hawk-moth caterpillar, which resembles a green cigar with horns. They also attract aphids of greenfly and blackfly, which drink the sap and convert it into honeydew, showering it down onto any unfortunate cars parked underneath.
Once the sparkling flowers open, hordes of worker bees arrive, lured by the intoxicating scent. For some, it proves a fatal attraction —every year, a huge number of dead bees are found lying under lime trees, where they are torn apart by great tits. Scientists are still debating the phenomenon and some studies have shown that caffeine in the nectar persuades the bees to return to the same flowers, even when the nectar is low. Ecologist Prof Dave Goulson, author of A Sting in the
Tale, says ‘it is likely to be a reflection of the sheer numbers of bees that visit a lime tree in bloom and they have to die somewhere’.
The small-leaved lime may be rare, but the future might still be hopeful for this ancient, broadleaved tree. Climate change is bringing hotter summers, which will help limes produce good quantities of viable seed. Tilia
cordata and Tilia platyphyllos are starting to appear on forestry recommendation lists as species to plant for the future. As trees such as ash and oak increasingly succumb to disease, the lime may well replace them and is likely to extend its roots further north. Long live the linden.