TILIACE--E. 



SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 



49 



7 



TILIA. 



Flowers in axillary or terminal cymes, regular, perfect ; sepals 5, distinct, val\ate 

 in aestivation, hypogynous, deciduous ; petals 5, imbricated in Eestivation, liypogynous ; 



F 



stamens numerous, polyadelphous or free. Fruit globose, indehiscent, 1 to 2-sceded. 



Tilia, LinnEeus, Gen. loG. — A. L. de Jussieu, Gen. 292. 

 Adanson, Fam. PI ii. 382. — Endlicher, Gen. 1008. 



Gray, Gen, III. ii. 91. ■ — Bentham & IIool;cr, Gen. i. 230. 

 BocquiUon, Mem. Til. 18. — BalUon, Hist. PL iv. 185. 



Trees, with terete slender brandies, mucilaginous juice, and tougb fibrous Inner bark. Leaves con- 

 duplicate in vernation, petiolate, alternate and two-ranked, usually obliquely cordate or truncate at the 

 base, acute, serrate, and furnished with membranaceous ligulate caducous stipules. Peduncle connate 

 to the middle with the axis of a membranaceous light green ligulate and persistent conspicuously reticu- 

 late-veined bract, and bearing minute caducous bracts at the base of the branches of the terminal cyme. 

 Flowers nectariferous, fragrant. Sepals lanceolate. Petals alternate with the sepals, oblong-ob ovate or 

 spatulate, the narrow base sometimes thickened and glandular, creamy white, deciduous. Stameus 

 inserted on a short hypogynous receptacle ; filaments filiform, distinct, or collected into five clusters and 

 united at the base with each other and with a spatulate petaloid scale ^ placed opposite each petal j 

 anthers fixed by the middle, two-celled, extrorse, the oblong ceUs separated by the forldng o£ the 

 filament. Ovary sessile, five-celled, the cells opposite the sepals; style erect, the dilated summit with 

 five introrsely stigmatic spreading lobes ; ovules two m each cell, ascending from the middle of its 

 inner angle, semi-anatropous, the micropyle centripetal-inferior. Fruit nut-hke, woody, globular or 

 ovoid, sometimes ribbed, one-celled by the obhteration of the partitions. Seeds obovate, semi-anatro- 

 pous, ascending; testa cartilaginous; albumen fleshy. Embryo large, often curved; cotyledons folia- 

 ceous, reniform or cordate, palmately five-lobed, the margins irregularly involute or crumpled ; the 



radicle inferior. 



The genus Tilia ^ is widely distributed m the temperate regions of the northern hemisphere, occur- 

 ring in all its great geographic o-botanical regions with the exception of western America, central Asia, 

 and the Himalayas. It is represented in eastern North America by four species, of winch one is Mexi- 

 can.^ Six or seven species are found in Europe* and the Orient;^' and six species are known in China, 



Manchuria^ and Japan.*^ 



TiKas are trees generally of large size,' with soft straight-grained pale-colored hght wood unable 



' Bacquillon conceived this scale to be the upper part of the stam- 

 inal receptacle projected into a petaloid body. To Baillon it was 

 the terminal interior and sterile stamen of the fascicle developed 

 into a petaloid scale. 



^ Tilia appears first in the ancient Tertiary formations of Grinnell 

 Land in 82° north latitude, and Spitzbergcn, where Tilia Malm- 

 greni, Heer, is found. This species, which existing Tilias of Europe 

 and America resemble, is believed by Saporta to be the ancestor 

 from which the Lindens of the two continents have descended. 

 {Origine Paleontologique des Arhres, 27G, f. 39.) 



« T. Mexicana, Schlechtendal, Linnaa, xi. 37C. — Hemsley, Bot. 

 Biol. Am. Cent. i. 141. ' 



* Nyman, Compcct. Fl. Europ. 130. 



5 Boissier, Fl. Orient. I 84G. 



6 Franehet & Savatier, Enum. PL Jap. i. 60.— Maximowicz, 

 Bull Acad. Sci. St. Petershourg, x. 584. — Forbes & Hemsley, Jour. 

 Linn. Soc. xxiii. 94. Dr. A. Henry's explorations in western China 

 have recently added two fine Lindens to the Chinese flora. 



T Accounts of several remarkable European Linden-trees liave 

 been published. The trunk of a tree planted in tlic town of Fri- 

 bourg in 1470 to commemorate the battle of Morat attained a di- 

 ameter of thirteen feet nine inches in 354 years. The Linden-tree 

 of Trons in the Grisons, a celebrated tree as early as 1424, had a 

 trunk fifty-one feet in circumference in 1798, and was believed by De 

 Candolle to be 533 years old. The trunk of the Linden of Villars- 

 en-Moing, near Morat, was thirty-eight feet in circumference four 



