Tilia The Dancing Lady

Oh Tilia, oh Tilia, say, have you met Tilia?
Tilia The Dancing Lady

It was a late summer barbecue, a few days after I'd moved into my new Cambridge flat. My fellow residents and I sat in a circle under the shade of the horse chestnuts and sycamores, that tower over our communal gardens. Though the ground was dry, we sat on a mismatched collection of chairs, brought out from the surrounding flats.

We partook of that stuttered dialogue that occurs between the unfamiliar, when people dip their toes into conversation tentatively, withdrawing if it becomes too uncomfortable. The discussion flitted between those topics to which conversations default in the home counties.

'Do you think the sunshine will last?'

'Yes, I think it'll hold for a while, but that cloud over there does look worrying.'

Gazes returned from the heavens to match those of their companions, but they soon darted down towards the ground, nervous of the prospect of sharing eye contact with the unfamiliar. It was then I noticed that beneath my feet, the lawn was covered with brown, desiccated leaves and the earth itself seemed bereft of almost all moisture.

The pull through a plant of water is subtle, yet astonishingly powerful; I remember David Attenborough remarking that evaporation can pull nearly half a tonne of water through a sycamore, every hour.

So it didn't surprise me that my feet rested on dry ground, but what did surprise me was the lime seed between my feet. Even though the alkaline soil leaves Cambridge liberally peppered with limes, the tree is absent from the streets surrounding my flat.

Tilia Cordata fruits, image from Wikimedia commons

The fruits of the lime tree hang down from a slender and curved bract, that causes the fruit to flick, spin and catch the wind as it falls. It's a haphazard dance that is intended to carry the seed far from it's parent. That I have yet to find the parent tree demonstrates that the little linden can glide far across the dancefloor, and our lady Tilia's pirouettes leave me just as dazzled as any ballerina's.