This lime has a birth certificate of sorts: an information board gives the year it was planted, 1907.
Photo: Martinus KE (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Silver Lime
Tilia tomentosa
Silver lime carries its identifying trick on the underside of every leaf: a coat of fine white felt that flickers the whole crown between green and silver on a windy day, readable from thirty metres away. We map 16 of them, in 15 cities.
It is the last lime to flower, in July. Tilburg's oldest tree, standing off the main square where nobody thinks to look, grows in a town that may take its own name from the species. A second Tilburg lime, in a small park on the Fokkerpad, stood in a private garden laid out by Leonard Springer before the estate opened to the public. Bruges planted three at the Gentpoort in 1928 as peace trees, ten years after the peace; they are now 35 metres tall. Amersfoort's is grafted, a weeping 'Petiolaris' crown joined onto an ordinary lime rootstock, its long leaf stalks letting each leaf swivel independently in the wind.
Munich
Berlin
Every leaf on this tree is two colours: dark green on top, silver-white felt underneath, so the crown flickers pale whenever the wind turns it over.
Breda
Turn one of this lime's leaves over and the underside is a soft, felted silver, which is where the species gets its name and why the whole crown seems to flicker when wind moves through it.
Leeuwarden
In a breeze this tree changes colour.
Silver limes flower in July, when most other nectar in a Dutch city is finished, and it is common to find dead and dying bumblebees on the ground beneath one.
Lucca
The youngest tree the register protects in Lucca's botanical garden stands sixty metres from one of its slowest growing: a silver lime planted around 1900, its leaves silvery on the underside and t...
Krakow
Krakow already has one small leaved lime on this list whose age comes from an unusually exact match between a tape measure and the published science: the Krowoderska Lime, four hundred and two cent...
Warsaw
In a strong wind this tree changes colour.
Tilburg
This small park was somebody's garden, designed by Leonard Springer.
Amersfoort
This tree carries two different kinds of leaf and you can find both from where you stand.
Haarlem
Dead bumblebees turn up under silver limes every summer, and botanists have argued about why for a century.
Enschede
A silver lime has held this street corner since the 1880s and nobody wrote down why.
Zwolle
Of the roughly two hundred trees Zwolle's council lists in Park 't Engelse Werk, one is a silver lime.
Helmond
This one was planted just after the castle changed hands, which makes it the last generation of the old park rather than a survivor of it.
Bruges
Bruges planted its peace trees ten years after the peace.
Hoorn
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.
Explore by city: Munich · Berlin · Breda · Leeuwarden · Lucca · Krakow · Warsaw · Tilburg · Amersfoort · Haarlem · Enschede · Zwolle · Helmond · Bruges · Hoorn · every city · or browse all species.