In the lime light

If you've ever parked your car under a lime tree for any length of time you might have noticed a kind of sticky residue on the roof. This is not, as some believe, tree sap. It's a substance called honeydew, a sugary secretion excreted by aphids (greenfly) that's very popular with bees and ants and other insects. But it also makes a mess of your car and, if you don't remove it, it will attract mould growth and damage your paintwork. 

It's a shame that the tree gets the blame because lime trees are actually pretty useful. The stringy fibrous bark - known as liber - was traditionally used to make rope. And the wood is soft and finely textured and is used in wood turning and carving. The great British woodcarver Grinling Gibbons (1648-1721) worked mostly in lime wood. I once spent two years working in a country house that had Gibbons' carvings on some of its walls. These aren't a patch on the work he did for some of the great country houses and royal palaces, but they are still exquisite. 

Lime wood is also used by furniture makers and, because the wood doesn't warp, it's still used today to make sounding boards for stringed instruments and piano keys. One rather more unusual traditional uses of lime wood is the making of sticks for Morris Dancers.

 

The leaves make pretty good eating - especially when they are young and look almost translucent. You can use them as a salad leaf and they are rich in protein and vitamin C. Meanwhile, the flowers and the fruit (including the attached leaf bracts) can be eaten too but are best when they're dried and used to make Linden tea (Linden is alternative name for the lime tree). 

There's a lot of folklore surrounding the tree. They were associated with protection and fertility. The leaves were used to fight fever and colds, and to promote sleep and serenity. In the Middle Ages, they were planted near hospitals because it was believed that they purified the air. In times of food shortage such as during the Second World War, dried lime leaves were ground into flour because of their nutritional properties

It's quite sad to see that many of the leaves on my local trees have already started to go brown and are falling to the ground.  But we have had an extended period of dry weather with barely any rain to speak of for weeks. 

In fact I've noted a lot of fallen leaves in general this July, many of them still green. But a tree will shed them if it needs to conserve water.

And it can always grow new leaves.