Tilia platyphyllos - Lime

Tilia platyphyllos, or large-leaved lime, is a large tree with a majestic silhouette and large deciduous leaves, which are beautifully cordate. Like all limes, it offers fragrant and honey-producing flowering, important for beekeeping and herbal medicine. Its foliage turns yellow in autumn. Its beautiful grey bark cracks as it ages. Of average to fast growth, it is content with ordinary, deep, moist soil, and a semi-shady exposure. It tolerates limestone soils, unlike the small-leaved lime, and is suitable for forming windbreak hedges with other large deciduous wild species such as oaks, hornbeams, beeches, and elms. Suitable for the largest gardens.

Tilia platyphyllos, also known as the Holland lime, belongs to the Malvaceae family. Quite rare in its natural state, it is native to Western Europe. Its growth is very rapid in its youth and its adult size can reach 35m (115ft) in height with a spread of 15m (49ft). It can reach 40m (131ft) in height if surrounded by other trees (as in a forest). This lime tree can live up to 1000 years. It is a very beautiful deciduous tree, often planted as a shade tree in parks or in rows along avenues.

It has a spreading to rounded habit, forming a broad dome-shaped canopy, thinner towards the top, surmounting an often short and massive trunk, becoming gigantic with age. The branches are ascending, starting low, and are arranged at an acute angle with the trunk. The young twigs and buds are reddish, glabrous or slightly hairy, punctuated by elongated light-coloured lenticels. They become more greyish over time. The leaves are entire, alternate, 10 to 20cm (4 to 8in) long, heart-shaped at the base, and bordered by small teeth. Pubescent, they turn a bright green in summer on the upper side, showing a felted underside and yellowish hairs at the angle of the veins. In autumn, they turn golden yellow. The flowering is early for a lime tree; it takes place at the beginning of summer, generally in June. The small flowers are pale-yellow with lime-green stamens. They are gathered in pendulous corymbs, in groups of 2 to 5, and attached to the twigs by a long petiole. Remarkably fragrant and rich in nectar, they bring joy to bees and herbal tea enthusiasts. They are followed by small globose fruits with 5 prominent ribs attached to a wing called a samara. The fruits are initially green then grey.

Plant for posterity in a garden large enough to accommodate it. It can be planted as a solitary shade tree or in rows along a very large avenue. If you have enough space, place two specimens at the entrance of the garden to frame a beautiful gate. You can plant it with other trees or shrubs such as Persian Parrotia or x Sycoparrotia, similar but with semi-evergreen foliage, the Sweet Gum, or the winged spindle (Euonymus alatus), on which you can let a Virginia creeper climb to create a dazzling grove from September to November. Its flowers are an important source of nectar, valuable for beekeepers. A Japanese medlar, flowering in October-November with a scent of bitter almond, a black locust, and the Honey Tree (Tetradium daniellii), flowering from June to August, could also play this nourishing role if you have a beehive in your garden.

A legendary tree: 

In Gaul, the lime tree was traditionally planted in the centre of the village. In Germany, it was under a lime tree that the Germanic peoples gathered to dispense justice. Its use in herbal tea is still very common in France, and it was once called "The Sorcerer's Tree" because of its medicinal properties attributed to powerful spirits residing in its bark. In the Canary Islands, a venerable lime tree grows and the locals call it "the weeping tree". It is said that in years of drought, it secretes enough fresh water to quench all the animals on the island.