Flowers

Small-leaved and large-leaved lime (blossom)

Tilia cordata Mill.; Tilia platyphyllos Scop. · linden, lime flower, linden flower, large-leaved lime · Polish: Lipa drobnolistna i lipa szerokolistna (kwiat)

Edible

Photo: Franz Eugen Köhler, Köhler's Medizinal-Pflanzen / Wikimedia Commons, Public domain

How to identify it

In small-leaved lime the leaves are hairless underneath, with tufts of rusty hairs only in the angles of the veins.
In large-leaved lime the leaves are larger (7–12 cm), with tufts of white hairs in the angles of the veins.
Pale yellow, strongly scented flowers in clusters joined to a pale, tongue-shaped bract.
Large-leaved lime flowers from June, small-leaved lime about two weeks later (late June–July).

Where it grows

Broadleaved woodland, especially oak-hornbeam woods, and scrub on fertile soils; often planted in parks and avenues.

In the kitchen and the home medicine cabinet

The flower clusters, together with the bract, are gathered during flowering, at the end of June or in July, in dry weather, and dried at up to 40 °C. Lime-flower infusion (lime-blossom tea), lime honey. In the EU, lime flower has an EMA monograph as a traditional herbal medicinal product (covering both species and the common lime).

Caution Lime flowers are gathered only from trees well away from major roads. Do not break branches — damaging trees in someone else's forest is a petty offence (Code of Petty Offences (Kodeks wykroczeń), art. 153 § 1 pkt 1); trees in towns and avenues have an owner. The only contraindication in the EMA monograph is hypersensitivity to lime flower.