Tilia cordata
Small-leaved lime (Tilia cordata)
The small-leaved lime or stone lime (Tilia cordata ) is a plant of the genus Linden (Tilia ) in the subfamily of the Linde plants ( Tilioideae ) within the family (Malvaceae ). The botanical spelling with a hyphen -leaved lime or lime - stone to emphasize the genus belonging to the Linden.
- 7.1 Literature
- 7.2 Notes and references
Features
The linden tree is a deciduous tree that can reach heights of growth to about 30 meters and up to 1000 years old is. His crown is domed shaped and often slightly irregular. The bark in young trees strikingly smooth and gray, later it is more brown gray and divided into several shallow, longitudinal furrows and bars. The branches are steeply upward, only in older trees, they tend to be partly down or sideways. The bark of the branches is brownish - red with lighter lenticels, glabrous or nearly bald. The egg-shaped, smooth, shiny reddish-brown buds have only two unequal large bud scales.
The change-constant leaves are stalked. The outline of the leaf blade appears almost circular, it ends in a very short, slender, clearly identifiable top and is cut at the base cordate, sometimes slightly askew, and about 6 inches long and 5 inches wide. The edge cut is regular and curved upwards. The upper leaf surface is dark green glossy, the lower blue-green. In the axils of the veins are rust-brown tuft of hair ( Domatien ).
Four to twelve flowers are located on a hanging or protruding everywhere inflorescence. The sepals and petals are whitish. The flowering period extends from June to July.
The spherical, bald capsule fruit is about 6 millimeters in size and has no protruding ribs.
Ecology
The flowers are vormännliche " nectar leading disk flowers " in drooping corymbs. You smell like honey. Nectar is deposited on the hollow sepals and is covered by hair. By night, the most nectar is deposited. The scar is slimy. Main visitors are bees and moths. Contrary to earlier information of the nectar is non-toxic (see Tilia tomentosa). The small-leaved lime is an important source of pollen for honey bees. The pollen can be carried by wind and then, among other things Cause hay fever. A tree can carry up to 60,000 flowers.
Propagation unit is the fruit stand, the stem of which is fused to the half with the tongue-shaped cover sheet ( Rekauleszenz ). The inflorescence bears 5-7 one-to two-seeded nuts. It is spread as a rotary wing aircraft by the wind. The fruit ripens in September where the fruit stand remains as winter stayer on the plant. Next spring germination above ground ( epigeal ) takes place. But even still green harvested fruit can germinate immediately. The cotyledons are exceptionally lobed palmate.
Occurrence
The small-leaved lime is widely used in Europe. It grows mainly in the low mountain ranges, in the northern lowlands it is rare. It is rather scattered to find in summer warm oak -hornbeam forests on fresh and usually deep soils.
Use
The linden tree is often planted as a street and park tree. In the apiary it is due to the very high sugar content of their nectar ( 30-74 %) and its high sugar value ( up to 3.57 mg sugar / day per flower) estimated a costume. She is an excellent source of nectar for bees, honey yields to about 2.5 kg per tree and flowering season are possible. From the linden blossom honey is as true to " lime honey "; this also includes honeydew attributable to shares.
Pharmacological use
As a medicinal drug used the dried inflorescences ( Tilia flos ). Tea preparations of the drug are used for colds and related cough. While the cough -relieving effect by the 10% content of mucilage (mostly arabinogalactans ) can be explained, was to date, no specific ingredient can be found as an explanation for the use of a welded -producing agent in febrile infections. The Schwitzeffekt is probably due in this case to the ingestion of hot water.
Use of wood and bast
→ Main article: basswood
The wood of the linden tree does not differ from the wood of the summer and the Dutch Linde Linde. In use of the timber is therefore not distinguish between these types. The main use of lime wood is in sculpture, carving and turnery. Especially the famous works of the late Gothic period, so by Tilman Riemenschneider or Veit Stoss were often made of basswood. Today, however, the easier -to-find wood of Eastern White Pine ( Pinus strobus ) is often used for carving.
Lime bark that is, the Sklerenchystränge the secondary phloem was used already in the lake dwellings of the Stone Age for making braided commodities. Even today, one uses it as Gärtnerbast and " tinkering ".