The Silver Lime of the Oosterplantsoen

Silver lime is the last of the limes to flower, and in a park full of trees that have already finished it can be the only thing working in July. This one stands near the Veliusbrug in the Oosterplantsoen with a trunk of over four metres round, which the register credits to about 140 years of undisturbed growth: it dates the planting to between 1880 and 1890 and is the only source we have found that records the tree. Tilia tomentosa came from southeastern Europe and Asia Minor and Dutch towns adopted it late, largely because it holds up in dirty air better than the common lime and does not drip the same sticky rain of aphid honeydew onto whatever is parked beneath. The tomentosa in the name means felted. Every leaf is dark green above and white with fine hairs below, so the crown changes colour with the wind and, on a bright day, looks lit from underneath. In leaf it is one of the densest shade trees in this park. It also gets called out for the bumblebees found dead under it in late summer, once blamed on the nectar and now more often put down to the tree flowering when starving bees have nothing else left to visit.