1670 The Trees of Great Britain and Ireland 



though planted only 4 to 5 yards apart, average 120 ft. high and about 10 ft. in girth. 

 They have the amount of variation in their leaves that one would expect to find in 

 seedlings, and though 250 years old^ only one out of forty is decayed. The bark of 

 these trees is more like that of an elm than the usual bark of a lime, but this is 

 perhaps owing to some peculiarity in the soil. A great lime at the end of the 

 pinetum at Ashridge is of a totally different character, having very drooping branches 

 and an immense spread. It has a trunk about 30 ft. high, and does not exceed 80 ft. 

 to 90 ft. in total height, but the branches cover a circumference of no paces. 



In Windsor Park, near Cranbourne Tower, there are some extremely tall and 

 graceful limes growing with beech in a circle which were planted^ in 1697. The 

 best of these that I measured was 130 ft. by 14 ft. in girth, a beech close by it 

 being 125 ft. by 10 ft. 



A remarkable case of the tendency of the lime to layer which occurs at Rotham- 

 sted, is figured in the Gardeners Chronicle, June 5, 1875. Here a row of fine old 

 limes have dropped their branches on each side to the ground, and these have grown 

 up in a thick mass, forming a shady corridor on each side of the trunks. There is 

 another good example at Enville Hall, Stourbridge, where hundreds of young stems 

 have arisen from layers, the whole mass measuring 140 paces round in 1904. 



A curious instance of natural inarching of the lime is described and figured in 

 Gard. Chron. xi. 277 (1879). 



The branches of the lime sometimes spread laterally to a great distance. One 

 of the best instances I have seen was shown me by Mr. Tudway at the Coombe, near 

 Wells in Somersetshire. The tree is a large-leaved lime growing in a sheltered dell, 

 about 100 ft. by 14 ft., and has three immense horizontal limbs 8 to 9 ft. in girth, one 

 of which extends for 64 ft. from the trunk. In Stoneleigh Park, Warwickshire, 

 there are some fine limes remarkable for their wide-spreading branches. In the 

 Thames valley there are many fine lime trees, one at Osterley Park being about 120 

 ft. in height ; while at Crowsley Park, near Henley, there are several in a clump, one 

 of which was 118 ft. by 12J ft. in 1908. 



E. Lees, in his account ' of the Forest and Chace of Malvern, speaking of the 

 common lime, says : — " Some very fine trees now stand in a field about half a mile 

 south of Bromsberrow Church, and by the side of the road leading from Ledbury 

 towards Gloucester. Two of these, growing near each other, have become conjoined, 

 both by the amalgamation of their arms, and by a lateral junction at the root.* The 

 largest of these trees is 27 ft. in circumference at three feet from the ground, and is 36 ft. 

 round the base ; the other is 1 1 ft. 3 in. in girth at a yard from the ground, and 19 ft. in 

 circumference at the base. The whole mass, if measured as one tree (and the interval 

 between the boles where the connecting root joins them is only 19 in.) is full 48 ft. 

 in circumference. In a field on the Priory Farm, Little Malvern, are several large 



1 In a book called Chiltern and Vale Farming, p. 153, published in 1745, it is stated by the anonymous author, who 

 lived close to Ashridge, that they were planted in 1660, and in 1745 or thereabouts were near 3 ft. in diameter at the bottom. 



2 W. Menzies, History of Windsor Great Park, 44 (1864). 



3 Abstracted in Gard. Chron. 1870, p. 1536, figs. 264, 265, 266. 



* I visited these trees in 1905, and found the largest now standing to be about 80 ft. high and 20 ft. 9 in. in girth. The 

 fruit was fully formed on i8th July. 



