Flavour of limes (Tilia species)

 

Winds had stripped all the leaves from lime trees but this large-leaved lime Tilia platyphyllos in Wolsingham churchyard is still holding on to a few of its winged seeds. Unlike the small-leaved lime T. cordata and common lime T. x europaea, the seed capsules of this species have distinctive raised ridges.

Autumn leaf fall has exposed the architecture of this magnificent mature common lime in a field at Stanhope in Weardale.

Common lime, a natural hybrid between large-leaved and small leaved limes, frequently has large burrs on its trunk that sprout a chaotic forest of twigs; in this one the burr is mid-trunk and its twigs have formed a massive skirt of small branches that would sweep down to ground level if they hadn’t been browsed by sheep: so, in this case, more like a ballet dancer’s tutu than a skirt.

All that twiggy burr growth from burrs at the base of the trunk makes common lime easy to propagate cheaply from cuttings, so it's often planted as an amenity street tree - but then the burrs have to be trimmed at the end of every growing season - like these two examples in the image below.

Ripe cherries

 Wild cherries Prunus avium have been ripening this week in Weardale. I've tasted quite a lot of wild cherries over the years and most are sour or bitter-tasting, but occasionally I come across a tree with unusually juicy, deep red fruits that make excellent cherry sauce for pouring over ice cream. It looks like a bird has already had a peck at one in the first picture, below. Once they begin to ripen the birds take them very quickly. 

Rooks often eat those that fall under the tree but only hawfinches have beaks that are strong enough to split open the stones. Otherwise the seeds pass unharmed through their gut and are dispersed to become new seedling trees, unless field mice find them. 

When I demolished our old garden shed a few years ago I found a wood mouse's stash of scores of cherry stones from the tree that used to grow in our garden hedge, each with a neat hole nibbled in it, where the rodent had extracted the kernel.