234 TREE ANCESTORS 



although the terms basswood and linn are also frequently applied 

 to it. Pulp mills consume large amounts of timber annually and 

 the lumber enters very largely into interior finish and planing 

 mill products, cheap furniture, turnery and similar uses. 



There are about a score of existing species, about equally divided 

 between North America, Europe and Asia. Apparently all of 

 these have very fragrant flowers, rich in nectar, and thus the source 

 of large quantities of honey — the Hght colored honey known as 

 bass-wood honey in our northeastern states. This utility, es- 

 pecially in the earher days of the human race, has made the linden 

 a favorite tree, and we find it mentioned by Theophrastus, Pliny, 

 Virgil, Aristophanes and other early writers. The Romans knew it 

 as Tilia and Virgil speaks of it particularly and mentions the quality 

 of the yokes made from its wood. Americans know it best as 

 basswood (bastwood). Lime is the favorite name in England, 

 doubtless a modification of the old English lind. In our South it 

 is often called Knn. Linden is the favorite of the Germans and it 

 is much mentioned in their folk poetry and early romances. The 

 word occurs in Beowulf, and it was a leaf settling between his shoul- 

 ders as he bathed beneath the Unden that enabled Hagen to stab 

 the otherwise invulnerable Siegfried. 



Aside from the compact handsome form of the tree and the beauty 

 of its foliage, I suspect that its association with bee keeping and the 

 distillation of the oil from its flowers for use in perfumery, has some- 

 thing to do with widespread custom of planting both the American 

 and the European form as shade trees, even though most of 

 humanity is no longer fortunate enough to keep bees, and as a 

 shade tree the linden is not very large and somewhat untidy. 



The various species of linden in the United States go by the 

 names of linden or basswood, less frequently the tree is termed 

 bee-tree or linn, the last name being common in certain southern 

 States, both the last two being essentially rural and the first two 

 more especially urban. Very infrequently are these trees called 

 Hmes in this country although the latter name is perhaps the 

 one most commonly applied to them in Europe as a whole, 

 where, as previously mentioned, it is probably derived as an 



