Tilia - History

History

In Europe, linden trees are known to have reached ages measured in centuries, if not longer. A coppice of T. cordata in Westonbirt Arboretum in Gloucestershire, for example, is estimated to be 2,000 years old. In the courtyard of the Imperial Castle at Nuremberg is a Tilia which tradition says was planted by the Empress Cunigunde, the wife of Henry II of Germany. This would make the tree about 900 years old in 1900 when it was described. It looks ancient and infirm, but in 1900 was sending forth a few leaves on its two or three remaining branches and was, of course, cared for tenderly. The Tilia of Neuenstadt am Kocher in Baden-Württemberg, Germany, was computed to be 1000 years old when it fell. The Alte Linde tree of Naters, Switzerland, is mentioned in a document in 1357 and described by the writer at that time as already magnam (huge). A plaque at its foot mentions that in 1155 a linden tree was already on this spot.

• The excellence of the honey of far-famed Hyblaean Mountains was due to the linden trees that covered its sides and crowned its summit.
• The name of Linnaeus, the great botanist, was derived from a lime tree.
• Lime fossils have been found in the Tertiary formations of Grinnell Land, Canada, at 82° N latitude, and in Spitzbergen, Norway. Sapporta believed he had found there the common ancestor of the Tilia species of Europe and America.