LIME or LINDEN. The lime trees, species of Tilia, are familiar timber trees with sweet-scented, honeyed flowers, which are borne on a common peduncle proceeding from the middle of a long bract. The genus, which gives the name to the family Tiliaceae, contains about ten species of trees, natives of the north temperate zone. The gen eral name Tilia europaea, the name given by Linnaeus to the European lime, includes several well-marked sub-species, often regarded as distinct species. These are : (1) the small-leaved lime, T. ulmifolia (T. parvifolia), prob ably wild in woods in England and also wild throughout Europe, except in the extreme south-east, and Russian Asia. (2) T. euro paea (or T. intermedia) the com mon lime, which is widely planted in Britain but not wild there, has a less northerly distribution than T. ulmifolia, from which it differs in its somewhat larger leaves and downy fruit. (3) The large-leaved lime, T. platyphyllos (or T. gran dif olia), occurs only as an intro duction in Britain, and is wild in Europe south of Denmark. It dif fers from the other two limes in its larger leaves, often 4 in. across, which are downy beneath, its downy twigs and its promi nently ribbed fruit. The lime sometimes acquires a great size ; one is recorded in Norfolk as being 16 yd. in circumference, and Ray mentions one of the same girth. The famous linden tree which gave the town of Neuenstadt in Wiirttemberg the name of Neuenstadt an der grossen Linden was 9 ft. in diameter.
The lime is an object of beauty in the spring when the deli cately transparent green leaves are bursting from the protection of the pink and white stipules, which have formed the bud-scales, and retains its fresh green during early summer. Later, the f rag
rance of its flowers, rich in honey, attracts innumerable bees; in the autumn the foliage becomes a clear yellow but soon falls.
Among the many famous avenues of limes may be mentioned that which gave the name to one of the best-known ways in Berlin, "tinter den Linden," and the avenue at Trinity College, Cambridge.
The economic value of the tree chiefly lies in the inner bark, called bast, and the wood. The former was used for paper and mats and for tying garlands by the ancients. Bast mats are now made chiefly in Russia, the bark being cut in long strips, when the inner layer is easily separable from the corky superficial layer. The wood is used by carvers, being soft and light, and by archi tects in framing the models of buildings. Turners use it for light bowls, etc. T. americana (bass-wood) is one of the most common trees in the forests of Canada and extends into the east ern and southern United States. It is sawn into lumber and under the name of white-wood used in the manufacture of wooden ware, cheap furniture, etc., and also for paper pulp. It was cultivated by Philip Miller at Chelsea in 1752.