Linden Tree or Basswood

 

Genus: Tilia < tilia, Latin ‘lime or linden tree.’ The Latin name for the European linden is probably akin to tillein, Greek ‘to pluck [hair or feathers], to extract fibre from.’ Its plant family name is Tiliaceae, the linden family. Other common names are the Lime tree and the Bee tree.

French: tilleul < tiliolus, medieval Latin diminutive form ‘little linden tree.’ In France linden-tree flowers were dried and made into a calming tea, une tasse de tilleul.

Linden leaves in sunshine’s lime-rich glow

Word Lore

Basswood

Bast < baest Old English, the root common to many Teutonic languages, like modern German Bast, Dutch bast, Old Norse bast, akin to Latin fascia, literally ‘bundle bound by fibrous rope.’ Basswood goes back to bass, a British dialect pronunciation of bast. Originally bast was fibre from the phloem or vascular tissue in the inner bark of the linden tree, of ancient and wide-spread use throughout Europe and among North American First Peoples. The long-celled bast fibres were made into rope, into twine, into plaits for basket weaving, mats, etc. The word bast was later applied to other fibres like jute, hemp, ramie, and raffia.

Bee Tree

The flowers of the linden are rich in nectar, attracting many bees, and where stands or plantings are abundant, the honey collected has a pleasant and distinctive flavour.

Lime Tree

Lime meaning linden tree was a confusion, a disguised form, called dissimilation in linguistics, in which an early compound like *lind-tree was pronounced first *line-tree then lime-tree. There was also confusion and blending with lime, the separate and unrelated citrus fruit. Both citruses, lemon and lime, go back to Arabic words limun and lima.

Linden

Linden, like aspen and like ‘the old, oaken bucket’ was originally an adjectival form of Old English lind ‘lime tree.’ Many Indo-European languages have this root *len whose prime meaning is ‘flexible’ in reference, to flexible fibres of the inner bark, much like the basswood-linden-tilia labels. Compare Old Norse lind, modern German gelinde ‘gentle’ but first meaning ‘supple, flexible, soft,’ Latin lentus ‘slow’ but first ‘supple, soft, lazy.’ Other English words containing the same root are lithe, and perhaps linen and line, as Eric Partridge suggests, from an ultimate Indo-European root *li ‘flax.’ This would make *len an extension of the flax root meaning ‘flexible as threads made of flax,’ then of rope or cord made of other materials, like the inner bark of the linden.

Under den Linden, Berlin

Berlin Street Name: Unter den Linden

Basswood or linden makes a dense-leafed shade tree, and is grown widely in the temperate zone along streets and in parks. For example, a famous broad avenue in old Berlin lined with grand hotels and elegant cafés was Unter den Linden ‘under the lime trees,’ which begins at the Brandenburg Gate and runs all the way to the River Spree. As defeat pressed in upon Nazi Berlin at the close of the Second World War, the grand avenue was bombed, and Berliners under Nazi orders had to cut down the linden trees to burn as fuel. Marlene Dietrich, Berlin’s ‘Blue Angel’, sang lyrics that included “As long as the old trees still bloom on Unter den Linden, Berlin bleibt Berlin.”

After the war, the street was blocked by the Berlin Wall. No longer moping in the glum confines of East Berlin, Unter den Linden today is resuming its lost bustle and growing some newer Linden trees.

Famous Surname: Linnaeus

European scientists and humanists beginning in the Renaissance and continuing during the Enlightenment often Latinized their first and last names and affixed such grand-sounding monikers to their scientific writings. The father of taxonomy and perfector of botanical and zoological binomials to name species published his work as Carolus Linnaeus. He was also known as Carl von Linné. But his birth name in Swedish was Karl Linn (1707-1778). In his native Småland, a province of southern Sweden full of woods, lakes, trout streams and now world-famous glassworks, linn meant linden tree. At the cathedral in Uppsala where Linnaeus lies buried is this terse, apt Latin epitaph: Princeps Botanicorum ‘the prince of botanists.’

 

Other Surnames

One-time Toronto Star humorist and now popular crime fiction novelist Linwood Barclay has a first name drawn from an English surname, itself based on Linwood ‘lime-tree wood.’ A village in Hampshire and two in Lincolnshire bear the name.

Jenny Lind (1820-1887) was known as “the Swedish nightingale” for her agile soprano. Her surname is Old Norse, sometimes now called Old Scandinavian, for ‘linden tree.’

Lindane, a now discredited insecticide —it was toxic to fish — was synthesized by and named after the Dutch chemist, Teunis van der Linden ‘of the linden grove.’

More Surnames

Ukrainian: Lipa ‘lime tree’

Russian: Lipin, Lipkin ‘lime tree’

Finnish: Lintunen ‘linden or lime tree’

Species

Of the thirty or so species, one, basswood, is native to Canada, growing among mixed hardwood stands in deciduous forests of the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence regions, from western New Brunswick out to the grasslands of southern Manitoba. Several other species are planted as ornamentals and shade trees. First Peoples who lived around the Great Lakes made splints of basswood bark to support injured arms and legs. They also made thread and thicker twine from the inner bark for many uses including wigwam construction.

And here for an arboreal conclusion is a song from William Shakespeare’s As You Like It.

Under the Greenwood Tree

Under the greenwood tree,
Who loves to lie with me,
And turn his merry note
Unto the sweet bird’s throat,
Come hither, come hither, come hither:
Here shall he see
No enemy,
But winter and rough weather.
Who doth ambition shun,
And loves to live i’ the sun,
Seeking the food he eats,
And pleas’d with what he gets,
Come hither, come hither, come hither:
Here shall he see
No enemy,
But winter and rough weather.

 

2012 William Gordon Casselman

 

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