Heart-shaped leaves with a lopsided base and rusty red tufts of hair in the vein angles underneath
Small-leaved lime — Tilia cordata. The common hybrid has whitish tufts and much bigger leaves.
Nature · Trees
Small-leaved lime
Deciduous · to 32 m · can live 500 years
Tilia cordata — Malvaceae
Once one of the commonest trees of lowland England — pollen records show it dominated the post-glacial 'lime provinces' — the small-leaved lime is now a scarce native of ancient woodland, though widely planted in parks. Its heart-shaped leaves carry rusty-red tufts of hair in the vein axils beneath, the detail that separates it from its relatives. The lime has nothing to do with the citrus fruit.
How to know it
How to spot them
- ▸Heart-shaped leaves with an asymmetric base, finely toothed, dark above and paler beneath
- ▸Rusty red-brown tufts of hair in the vein axils on the underside of the leaf
- ▸Flowers and fruits hang from a long pale strap-shaped bract
- ▸Bark grey and smooth, becoming finely ridged; trunks often surrounded by dense burrs and suckers
- ▸Sticky honeydew from aphids drips onto anything parked beneath a planted avenue
How to know it
Flowers and fruits dangle from a long, pale, strap-shaped bract that acts as a wing
Small-leaved lime, like all limes.
Pollen cores show it dominated lowland England after the last ice age, in what botanists call the lime provinces
Small-leaved lime.
Its inner bark yielded bast for rope and matting; its soft pale wood was Grinling Gibbons's carving timber
Lime — and small-leaved lime in particular.
Aphids on planted avenues of it drip honeydew onto everything parked beneath
Lime. Small-leaved lime is the cleanest of the three; the common hybrid is the worst offender.
Its specific epithet means 'heart-shaped', for the leaf
Small-leaved lime — Tilia cordata.
Despite the English name it is in the mallow family and has no connection with any citrus fruit
Lime — from Old English lind, as in linden and the surname Lyndhurst.
Quick-fire facts
- •Tilia cordata — cordata means 'heart-shaped', from the leaf outline
- •Now placed in the Malvaceae, the mallow family, with cotton, okra and hibiscus
- •'Lime' is a corruption of Old English lind (linden); there is no link to the citrus lime
- •Britain's other limes are large-leaved lime (T. platyphyllos) and the common hybrid (T. x europaea), the usual avenue tree
- •Tufts of hair in the leaf vein axils are the key: rusty red in small-leaved lime, whitish in the common hybrid
- •Bast, the fibrous inner bark, was stripped for rope and matting across Europe
- •The soft, even-grained wood is the classic carving timber, used by Grinling Gibbons
- •Lime flowers make a mild tea, tilleul or linden tea, and are heavily worked by bees
- •Berlin's Unter den Linden and the Germanic association of the lime with justice both refer to this genus
Drill it — 8 cards
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Sources
- Woodland Trust — Small-leaved lime (Tilia cordata)