88 LIME. 



Description. — Common Lime is a noble tree, often attaining the 

 height of fifty or sixty feet: the bark is thick and fissured, the wood 

 is light, and soft, and white ; the branches are numerous, smooth, 

 somewhat angular when young. The leaves are cordate, acuminate, 

 serrated, quite smooth above, glabrous beneath, except a woolly 

 tuft at the origin of each vein, twice the length of the foot- 

 stalks. The inflorescence is a stalked cyme, springing from the 

 middle of a large, membranous, axillary, lanceolate, yellowish 

 bractea, which falls off with the fructified cyme. The calyx is five- 

 parted, deciduous ; the segments ovate, lanceolate, concave, and 

 acute. The corolla is composed of five obovate spreading petals of 

 a pale lemon colour, tapering into a short claw, without a scale at 

 the base, rather longer than the calyx. The stamens are numerous, 

 rather longer than the corolla, with erect, subulate filaments, and 

 cordate yellow anthers. The germen is superior, globose, villous, 

 five-celled, surmounted by a cylindrical, deciduous style, crowned 

 by a sub-capitate stigma. The fruit is coriaceous, downy, oblong- 

 turbinate, by abortion usually one-celled, and one or two seeded. 

 Plate 30, fig 2, (a) entire flower magnified ; (b) fruit ; (c) transverse 

 section of the same ; (rf) seed. 



This tree is a native of Europe generally, and is found in many 

 parts of this country, in woody and hedge-rows, though probably 

 not indigenous. It flowers in July. 



The origin of the term Tilia is rather obscure ; some writers 

 suppose that it is derived from TrreAea, an elm, in reference to the 

 shape of the leaves ; according to others, it is an alteration of telia, 

 from telum, a dart, in allusion to the use of the wood. None of 

 the Greek writers mention this tree, except Theophrastus,* whose 

 <p*Aupaf is supposed to refer to it, on the authority of Pliny. % The 

 Lime, Lin or Linden tree, was called Lind, in the Anglo-Saxon. 

 The family-name of the illustrious Linnaeus, or as he is termed in 

 his native country, Linne, is said to have been derived from a famous 

 Lime-tree which grew in the vicinity of the place where his ances- 

 tors resided. 



Ten species of Lime-tree have been described, of which four are 



* Hist. lib. Hi. c. 10. 



f Hence philura ; a term applied to the inner bark of various trees, 

 used for paper or writing-tablets. 

 % Hist. Nat. lib. xvi. 5. 14. 



