Under the Linden tree
by Miss Roberts
Lime trees can be seen lining many of London’s Victorian streets, often heavily pollarded to keep them smaller than they would naturally grow. For years I wondered why I never saw limes on these lime trees; it seemed I was missing something. Then I found out that lime trees never have any citrus fruit because they are completely unrelated to the citrus family. The reason they’re called ‘lime’ in the UK is simply a corruption of ‘linden tree’, which is what these trees are called in Europe. In America, it is also known as ‘basswood’. In the wild they can live for three hundred years (although some have been estimated at around two thousand), can grow very tall and have a girth of up to six metres.
I foolishly promised my drawing students I’d make them some linden flower tea for their last class this term. Linden trees don’t flower for long, just a couple of weeks in June, and you need to get the flower while it’s still young. I was too late. The flowers I collected were just too old and battered to turn into a decent tea, so I cheated, finding some linden flower tea in my local grocery store. I took it to work and brewed the tea in an old cafetière that I found in a cupboard there. It was okay, my students said they liked it. I didn’t say that it was collected by me, but then I didn’t say that it wasn’t, either.
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