THE BASSWOODS OR LINDENS 201 



parachute to steer the little olive-green balls or 

 nuts into a place of safety. How the wind loves 

 to toss them about ! Gravitation and buoyancy 

 strive for the mastery, and usually the little 

 basswood balls, which contain from one to two 

 fertile seeds, have quite an adventure. 



Basswood seeds come true to type and are 

 very easily grown. Moreover, they are well 

 protected from drying and will keep for some 

 time. The early colonists brought the seeds 

 from their old home, and to-day one may see 

 towering lindens shading the dormer windows 

 and qualint roofs of colonial mansions through- 

 out New England. Basswood cuttings grow 

 almost as readily as willow twigs. The trees 

 endure the severest pruning, and landscape 

 gardeners have cut them into all sorts of shapes, 

 grotesque and otherwise. In England, the lin- 

 den is known as the lime tree, and stately ave- 

 nues of it are to be seen everywhere. The 

 tree grows to a great age. There is on record 

 the description of a French lime tree more than 

 fifty feet in circumference and said to be nearly 

 600 years of age. The famous linden of Neu- 

 stadt, in Wurtemberg, is thought to be at least 

 1000 years old. 



The Germans love the linden, and speak of it 

 as "The tree of the Resurrection." It is the 



