Weeping Silver Lime

Tilia tomentosa 'Pendula'

A weeping silver lime is a grafted cultivar of Tilia tomentosa, its branches trained to arch back toward the ground, and every leaf carries a coat of white felt on its underside that flickers the whole crown pale in the wind. We map 4 of them, in 4 cities.

Park designers planted it for exactly that shimmer. Ghent's grew from an 1851 planting laid out for a private zoo whose grounds became Muinkpark once the animals left. Maastricht's stand in a group along the moated bank of Haet ende Nijt, planted in the 1860s. Tilburg's has an actual date, 1898, in Leonard Springer's original layout of the Wilhelminapark. Alkmaar's is younger, from the 1930s, on the old rampart earthworks the city turned into parkland. Copenhagen's in J.C. Jacobsens Have is 27.5 metres tall, its main branches held together with wire.