Limes and Planes

by Doctor Science

Mister Doctor and I were driving down a winding road the other day, and he asked me what the beautiful shade trees along it were. "Sycamores", I said, "what in Europe are called plane trees." He confessed that when he was young and heard of "plane trees" he was befuddled, not knowing if the grownups were talking about "just plain trees", or trees that had something to do with airplanes, or if they were flat, or grew on the plains, or what. We also talked about how confusing it can be when British and American English have two different words for the same thing, and I said I was confused for years by British books that referred to "limes" as large European shade trees. Mister Doctor had just assumed they meant citrus trees, but I said no, they're actually linden trees.

I promised him I'd look up why sycamores are called "plane" trees, and how linden trees got to be "limes" -- and so I did, and now I shall share with you.

"Lime" is easiest. The earlier English word for trees of the genus Tilia was lind or line. Linden meant "made of lind", as oaken = made of oak. "Lime" became common around 1620 -- "Klein suggests the change of -n- to -m- probably began in compounds whose second element began in a labial (such as line-bark, line-bast)". I guess it's just one of those odd coincidences that the citrus fruit lime was first mentioned in English around 1630.

Tilia was especially important as a source for bast -- the inner bark, which could be stripped off and processed to make strong, water-resistant ropes (cordage). That's why Philip Miller named a common European species cordata, and why an American name for the tree is basswood (from "bastwood").

I wonder how much lime alleys like this one at Clumber Park, planted in 1840:

Photo by Dr MacBatts.

were meant to be conspicuous consumption -- to grow for beauty a plant that had commercial value. Or they could have been valued for their scent as well as their shade -- Berlin's famous avenue Unter den Linden was first planted with linden-trees in 1647. Those trees never seem to have grown terribly large -- here is an image from 1820:

The oldest lindens currently on Unter den Linden were planted in the 1950s -- I don't know if there were any trees, of any species, left unburnt in Berlin by late 1945.

Plane trees have been so-called for millennia: platanos is their Greek name, referring to their large, flat leaves. They've been cultivated as shade trees for centuries, not least because they can grow to enormous age and size.

When I was a little girl I *hated* them. When I was 8 years old, my father was a Fulbright Scholar in Aix-en-Provence. So my first real exposure to plane trees was in southern France, over the winter. As British writer Deborah Lawrenson writes,

Even in winter and early spring, when the trees are bare, they are still a stirring sight. The bark peels distinctively into a patchwork of palest pistachio green and brown, but there is a curious rippling of the core structure which gives the impression of a tight, wrinkled skin covering the body of the tree and exacerbates its nakedness.

In the towns, these are the trees that will shade busy squares full of restaurants and outdoor cafes during the summer months. But they are viciously pollarded after their leaves drop, so that in winter their deformed appearance can lend an atmosphere of surprising menace over the streets at night.

Lawrenson, an adult, can find pollarded plane trees interestingly macabre. To me as a child, they looked sick, mutilated and be-tumored, and their peeling bark was how I imagined leprosy might look. ugh ugh ugh, I still get the bad-shivers thinking about it.

When I got to know American sycamores as an adult biologist, I had no such reaction. They seemed beautiful and interesting, nothing like the cancerous-looking plane trees of Europe. I actually think it was a while before I made the connection between sycamores and planes, because I had such different reactions to them.

The trees Mister Doctor was asking about are mostly likely London plane trees, not American sycamores, judging by their "camouflage" bark and their roadside location. Around here, sycamores have very white branches and are almost always within a few yards of a stream. In the winter, you can look into a wooded valley and spot the watercourse by the white sycamores among the brown branches of other trees.

Sycamore in Christian County, KY, by Genevieve Netz.

But why "sycamore"? Why have a different word for the American tree, when the European one has been familiar for centuries?

The Online Etymology Dictionary says:

A Biblical word, originally used for a wide-spreading shade tree with fig-like fruit (Ficus sycomorus) common in Egypt, Palestine, Syria, etc., whose leaves somewhat resemble those of the mulberry; applied in English from 1580s to a large species of European maple (also plane-tree), perhaps because both it and the Biblical tree were notable for their shadiness (the Holy Family took refuge under a sycamore on the flight to Egypt), and from 1814 to the North American shade tree that also is called a buttonwood, which was introduced to Europe from Virginia 1637 by Filius Tradescant).

But Chaucer mentions sicamoure as a furniture wood. This doubtless refers to Sycamore Maple -- which is also known as false plane tree.

In other words, well before 1492 there was already a connection between the word "sycamore" and plane trees. I think this was because the word sycomore [variously spelled] is used repeatedly in the Bible, both Hebrew and Christian. To the Bible-writers, it meant the fig tree: large, shady, long-lived. When people in Europe read the Bible, knowing nothing of fig trees, they mentally substituted a large, familiar, long-lived shade tree, preferably one with large leaves.

I think the Biblical associations are another reason sycamores were often planted as bride and groom trees, in front of a new house. I don't know if the "bride and groom tree" custom is practiced in Europe, but I've heard variations of it in various areas of the US, involving whatever shade trees are locally favored.

The Large Plane Trees (Road Menders at Saint-Rémy) (1889), by Vincent Van Gogh. Because I can't talk about trees in Provence without putting in Van Gogh.

Comments

[Hartmut]

Some echo of Philemon & Baucis in the bride and groom tree custom maybe? The custom seems to have no wiki entry but googling indicates that it is a Jewish one.

[cim]

That is exactly how I feel about those lumpy trees too. They are used ornamentally here in Finland - mostly I try not to look closely at them.

[Migel]

I'm somehow disturbed to discover that the sycamore Mama Cass sung about isn't good old acer pseudoplatanus which I've know since my childhood.

[Nigel]

Apologies for the double post, & inadvertent pseudonym.

[Doctor Science]

Nigel:

no problem. I deleted the 4 extras, they didn't seem to add much to the conversation. *g*

[twistedchick]

Linden -- tilia -- flowers also make a very pleasant herbal tea.

[PaulB]

Have I got this right? English -> American:

Sycamore -> Great Maple (with the spiralling seeds)
Plane -> Sycamore
Lime -> Linden

[liberal japonicus]

First year music major, we had a drop the needle test (do they do that? how?) with Schubert's Winterreise with Der Lindenbaum.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyxMMg6bxrg

I haven't listened to that for at least 35 years, so thanks for getting me to pull that up.

Speaking of lime trees, we have the fruit tree in the back yard, but I always find myself disappointed that they don't seem to commercially grow limes here in Kyushu. The area is a big citrus growing area, but limes don't seem to count. They have a fruit called kabosu

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabosu

but it is a poor substitute for a lime.

[Doctor Science]

PaulB:

British Sycamore is American "Sycamore Maple", a non-native species and not particularly common.

In the US, I've heard "basswood" at least as often as "linden". American Sycamores also used to be known as buttonball trees or buttonwood trees. I don't know if the name just refers to the shape of the fruit -- a tightly-packed balls of seeds, light-weight and buoyant -- or if the wood was once used to make buttons.

[Porlock Junior]

Wait. You're telling me that the limeys who staved off scurvy with fruit from the lime tree (citrus) used ropes made from lime trees (linden)?

Too much for me. I think I need a daiquiri right now, rush job, hurry and get me some quicklime.

[Girl from the North country]

I believe that the reason London Plane trees thrive in London (which is full of them) as well as other big cities is because of the mottled bark - the trees absorb and then continually shed pollution without being harmed by it.

[JAFD]

Note that (Eng) lime / (US) basswood is great raw material for model building, etc - small pieces can be bought in many hobby shops. Back in ye good old pre-Internet days, yours truly was quite puzzled by the 'lime' references in the English craft magazines that made it to US shores

[chris y]

Paul8: English usage "Plane" is generally for the entire genus Platanus and specifically (and more commonly) for the London Plane, which is a hybrid of American Sycamore and Oriental Plane. As Dr S says, English "Sycamore" is American Sycamore, which may not be common now, but was widely planted in Britain for garden shade in the first half of the last century.

[Peggy Hopper]

LJ- Limes seem quite unsuited to the climate of Kyushu, with its January minimums of 0 C.

From the National Gardening Association "Lemons and limes are more sensitive to cold than other kinds of citrus and shouldn't be allowed to be touched by frost. They actually stop growing when temperatures dip below 50 F."

[liberal japonicus]

Thanks Peggy, though we have lemons here (though not in the numbers that they have other citrus) and the area to the south of me, a area called Amakusa, I don't think has ever gone below 0 C.

Though I guess there is a chance that the temp could dip and no one wants to make an investment like that. However, it is getting hotter in Kyushu, and they have started to grow mangoes here in Kumamoto (they've been around a while in Miyazaki) However, the price point with mango is probably easier to deal with start up costs, etc.

[ABW]

Very interesting. Isn't there a plane tree in Africa as well?

[Treacy Centre]

Loving the subtly of your photos :)