The Lime of Rue de la Solidarite

For about a fortnight in June this lime does something no other tree on the street can: it fills the air. Tilia platyphyllos carries small yellow green flowers among the most heavily scented in the European flora, loud with bees for the whole of that fortnight, and those same flowers are picked and dried into tilleul, the infusion in every French pharmacy cupboard. The rest of the year it is a large tree on a quiet road. This one holds a stretch of Soupetard, a residential district about 2.8 kilometres northeast of the Capitole, and it is on Toulouse's own list of remarkable trees. That list is also the only source for it. No age, no girth, no measurement, nothing published anywhere else, which is the standard state of affairs for the trees on this page. What the register does add is that the tree sits at its adult stage and is semi free in form, meaning somebody pruned it at some point and then let it be, which is the ordinary life of anything growing at the kerb of a working street. It stands on the roadway itself, roughly seventy metres from the primary school at number 37, on public pavement you can walk up to at any hour. Go in June. Out of season this is a good tree on a plain street, a long way from everything else on the list.