Limes

These lime flowers having sunk to about head height down Manor Green Road yesterday, where there are a number of the trees, possibly the remnants of two lines, one on side of the road. Very pretty they were too.

The lime in Bad Sooden Allendorf

The 1,000 year old lime in Schenklengsfeld

That said, for some reason I think of lime trees as being rather unhealthy, with lots of die-back, particularly when grown in lines, as here. Or lining the drive which once led to the central building of the mental hospital in Exminster, in Devon. Which is odd, as the trees are important in Germany where I think you often get big ones as the centrepiece of village greens, complete with benches around the base of the trunk for the old gentlemen, their gossip and their pipes. Very important if a quick peek at the relevant chapter of reference 1 is anything to go by, with the first of the trees above described as the spurious inspiration for the Müller poem of the Schubert song at reference 2.

An old lime in Chilston Park in Kent

Lime carving

Maybe there is something about the German climate which suits these trees better than the English climate. But what about the tree from Wikipedia, snapped above? And furthermore Grinling Gibbons did a lot of his most famous carving in lime wood, so where did he get that from? 

Then there is the question of what relation does the our lime tree have to the tree on which limes are grown. The answer seems to be the lime tree is from the German while the lime to eat is from the Persian. While a lime in French is also a file, the sort of thing you used to smuggle into prisons in the olden days.

Reference 1: Schubert's Winter Journey: Anatomy of an obsession - Ian Bostridge - 2015.

Reference 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyxMMg6bxrg. The song of the lime tree.

Reference 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tilia.