CHAPTER XXII 



The Linden or Basswood 



"A summer home of murmurous wings, 

 And all around the large lime feathers low." 



— Tennyson. 



The family Tiliaceae to which the Linden belongs comprises 

 about 35 genera and upwards of 400 existing species. These are 

 chiefly tropical, and they are massed in two general regions — one 

 around the Indian Ocean and the other in northern South America. 

 The number of genera that have known fossil representatives is 

 tmfortimately limited to ancestral forms of the linden (Tilia), to 

 the genus Grewiopsis which is ancestral to the existing oriental 

 species of Grewia, and to the genus Triumfetta which is found in 

 the tropics of both hemispheres and abundant in the Antilles and 

 tropical South America, with two fossil species in the lower Miocene 

 of Chile: To Apeihopsis which is ancestral to the South American 

 genus Apeiba, and to the South American genus Luhea. All of 

 these indicate that in former times the geographical distribution 

 of the various members of this family was very different from what 

 it is at the present time. 



The genus Tilia, which gives its name to the family, although 

 belonging to a family that is essentially tropical, is itself confined 

 to the North Temperate Zone, occurring on all of the great northern 

 land masses, but now absent in western North America, in central 

 Asia, and in the Himalayan region. All of the existing species 

 are trees, all have similar simple alternate leaves with free stipules, 

 all have similar flower clusters borne on a large leaf-like bract, and 

 the fruits are nut-like, although some of the members of the family 

 have capsular fruits. 



The wood is pale in color and soft, but straight grained and 

 easily worked. In America it is commonly known as whitewood, a 

 name which it shares with the wood of the tuhp-tree, Liriodendron, 



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