Tilia platyphyllos Seeds | Large-leaved Lime

Categories：Tree

Large-leaved Lime (Tilia platyphyllos) seed — Large-leaved Lime (*Tilia platyphyllos*): Malvaceae, native to Central and southern Europe from France east through the Balkans to the Caucasus and northern Turkey; its status in the British Isles has been argued over for two centuries.

LATIN NAME: Tilia platyphyllos

COMMON NAME: Large-leaved Lime

Plant Profile

Tilia platyphyllos is a large, round-headed, long-lived tree, often 20 to 30 metres tall, with a smooth grey trunk that becomes ridged and hollow with great age. It differs from the small-leaved lime in one obvious way, and that is the only comparison worth making here: its leaves run from 6 to 12 cm across, roughly twice the size, and the underside is softly hairy rather than smooth, with a heart-shaped blade, a drawn-out tip and sharply toothed edges.

The flowers are small, creamy and five-petalled, held in drooping clusters of a handful rather than the dozen or more of the small-leaved lime, and each cluster hangs from the middle of a long pale green bract. That bract keeps its colour into autumn, and when the clusters break free the blade acts as a wing, carrying the woody, ribbed nutlets away from the parent on the wind.

Turn a lime leaf over and look where the main veins meet the midrib: there is a small tuft of fine hairs at each junction, and in this species the whole underside is hairy as well. Those tufts are domatia, sheltered chambers used by predatory mites, and the tree tolerates them because the mites eat the spider mites that would otherwise work the leaves.

Limes are usually raised from seed or from layers, but named avenue clones are propagated vegetatively, and tissue culture has been used to multiply selected Tilia material from axillary buds and shoot tips, which is useful when a planting scheme wants a particular crown shape in quantity.

Science & Biotechnology

The flowers and their bracts are the most used part of the lime tree.

Lime flower is rich in flavonol glycosides built on quercetin and kaempferol, together with rutin and a compound named for the genus itself, tiliroside, a kaempferol glucoside carrying a coumaroyl group. Mucilage polysaccharides give the dried flower its slippery feel, and the sesquiterpene alcohol farnesol is among the volatile components that give the infusion its honeyed note.

Uses & Benefits

Few trees have been used so completely, and few have shaped European townscapes so thoroughly.

Lime has been planted in lines along streets and park walks in central and northern Europe for centuries, because it grows straight, tolerates pollarding and clipping, and lives long enough to outlast the people who planted it. The famous Berlin avenue whose name means simply under the limes is the best-known example of the tradition.

The timber is soft, light, even-grained and creamy white, and it neither splits nor warps badly when it dries, which makes it the classic wood for carved bowls, spoons and platters, which is why the wood is still bought by carvers. The inner bark, the bast, yields a strong fibre that was twisted into rope, woven into mats and nets, and used for rough cloth and footwear in northern Europe before cheap cordage arrived.

Growing from Seed

Lime seed is slow because it carries two separate obstacles, and the sowing plan has to allow for both.

The nutlet has a woody coat and an embryo that is not ready to grow when the seed is shed, so it needs a warm, moist period first and a cold, moist period after it. Sow in autumn, 1 cm deep in a gritty, humus-rich compost, and leave the pots in a cold frame through the winter; the seedlings appear the following spring, and stragglers may come up in a second season, so keep the tray for another year.

Lift the seedlings when the second true leaf has opened and the root is still small, pot them into deep containers and grow them on in light shade for their first summer. Lime roots are deep and the trees transplant badly once they are large, so move them small and often rather than late, and plant out at 30 to 40 cm into ground cleared of perennial weeds. Stake for two seasons and keep rabbits and voles away from the bark.

Our Take

I would plant a large-leaved lime only where there is room for a tree that will outlive the house. If the site is small, small-leaved lime is the more sensible choice; for scent and a silver underside, plant a silver lime instead, and where the winter is severe the hardier Amur lime is worth trying in its place. Raise your tree from a small seedling in a deep pot, give it a clear square metre and a straight leader.

Tree Seeds / Tree