THE BROAD-LEAVED LINDEN— continued. 
use of the bast or liber for tying garlands, or for paper — a use that has given 
us the word “library.” 
Apart, however, from associations and utilitarian considerations, the Lindens 
have beauty and scientific interest sufficient to command attention. They are tall, 
straight-stemmed trees, with smooth bark, either round-headed or, when more 
perfectly developed, draped in equal drooping boughs from the ground to their 
summits eighty or ninety feet up, so as to present a grand columnar aspect. The 
four rows of fine trees which give the name Unter den Linden to one of the finest 
streets in Berlin, though of world-wide fame, are not equal to the avenue, over a 
mile in length, at Herrenhausen, in Hanover. At Ken Wood, Hampstead, there 
are specimens of unusual height ; and at Dromana, in County Waterford, is a 
magnificent avenue ; but one of the most beautiful is that of Trinity College, 
Oxford, where the bare boughs in winter form a perfect Gothic arcade like some 
cathedral aisle. One of the charms of such an avenue is the wreath of adventitious 
shoots encircling the base of the trunk — a wreath of coral branchlets as they sparkle 
in the faint sunlight of spring, a wreath of verdure in summer, and a wreath of 
gold in autumn. 
The Small-leaved Linden ( T ilia cordata Miller), the only species which is even 
possibly indigenous in England, has smooth, yellowish-brown twigs ; the Broad- 
leaved ( T . platyphyllos Scopoli) has them downy ; and its variety, T. rubra Lindley, 
has them reddish-brown; but all alike are “ruby-budded,” throwing off their 
brilliant red stipules as the delicate green leaves unfold into a vertical drooping in 
May. Their bright greenery at that season naturally suggested cheerfulness to 
Chaucer when he wrote : — “ Be ay of chere as light as lefe on Linde.” On the 
under surfaces of the leaves there are, at the branching of the veins, woolly tufts of 
hair which, it is suggested by Lundstrom, are domatia, or homes, for mites, which 
are supposed to be useful to the tree by eating the spores of fungi that fall upon 
the leaves. 
The inconspicuous, greenish-yellow blossoms hang down in June and July in 
clusters, the stalk of which is adherent to the remarkable, large, buff-tinted, 
membranous bract. Their delicious perfume, which is said to increase in power as 
it diffuses through the air, and their copious stores of nectar, render them as 
attractive to bees as the most gaily-coloured flowers ; and an excellent class of 
pale-coloured honey is manufactured by the bees that visit these trees. 
The adherent bract may be of some assistance in the dispersal of the bunch of 
top-shaped, five-angled, downy fruits ; but, in this country, the Lindens seldom 
ripen their seed ; so that to see the palmately five-lobed cotyledons it is better to 
cultivate imported seed. 
