Also 8 lyme. [App. an altered form of line LIND.]
1. A tree of the genus Tilia (N.O. Tiliaceæ), esp. T. europæa, a common ornamental tree having heart-shaped leaves and many small fragrant yellowish flowers; the linden.
Red Lime, T. grandifolia Ehrh.
1625, 1649, 1667. [see 3].
1697. Dryden, Virg. Georg., IV. 209. His Limes were first in Flow’rs.
1704. Pope, Autumn, 25. The lymes their pleasing shades deny.
a. 1705. Ray, Synopsis Plant. Angl. (1724), 473. Tilia foliis molliter hirsutis, viminibus rubris.… ’Tis known by the name of the Red Lime, and grows naturally in Stoken-church Wood.
1711. Swift, Jrnl. to Stella, 27 Aug. It is autumn this good while in St. James’s Park; the limes have been losing their leaves.
1784. Cowper, Task, I. 316. The lime at dewy eve Diffusing odours.
1842. Penny Cycl., XXIV. 447/1. T[ilia] rubra, Red Lime…. The young branches are of a beautiful coral-red colour, thence it has been called T. corallina.
1849. Aytoun, Buried Flower, 176. Ere the bees had ceased to murmur Through the umbrage of the lime.
1861. Delamer, Fl. Gard., 10. The Lime is a good town tree, leafing early in spring, and perfuming the air with its blossoms in August.
2. The seed of the lime-tree.
1747. Mrs. Glasse, Cookery (1767), 269. To pickle stertion-buds and limes; you pick them off the lime-trees in the summer. Take new stertion-seeds or limes, pickle them when large.
3. attrib. and Comb., as lime-avenue, -bark, -flower, -gall, -grove, -tree, -walk, -wood; lime bug, an insect that infests lime-trees; lime hawkmoth, Smerinthus tiliæ, whose larva feeds on the lime (1869 E. Newman, Brit. Moths, 5).
1899. J. W. Mackail, Life W. Morris, II. 348. Up the short *lime-avenue to the tiny church.
1894. Gladstone, Horace’s Odes, I. xxxviii. 2. The wreaths with *limebark bound.
1832. Planting, vi. 72 (L.U.K.). Coccus tiliæ, *lime bug.
1888. Syd. Soc. Lex., *Lime flower oil, a colourless or yellowish volatile oil obtained by distillation from the flowers of Tilia europæa and other species.
1753. Chambers, Cycl. Supp., *Lime galls,… a sort of galls or vegetable protuberances, formed on the edges of the leaves of the lime tree in spring time.
1667. Dryden & Davenant, Tempest, III. iii. In the *lime-grove, which weather-fends your cell.
1798. Nemnich, Polyglotten-Lex., v. 817. *Lime hawk moth, Sphinx tiliae.
1625. Bacon, Ess., Gardens (Arb.), 558. The Flowers of the *Lime Tree.
1649. Blithe, Eng. Improv. Impr. (1653), 172. The Lime Tree is also newly discovered as useful in our English plantations.
1797. Coleridge, ‘This lime-tree bower,’ 2. Here must I remain, This lime-tree bower my prison!
1860. Murray’s Berks, Bucks, & Oxfordsh., 172/2. There is a pleasant garden attached to Trinity, with a trellised lime-walk of great celebrity.
1731. Lunenburg (Mass.) Proprietors’ Rec. (1897), 209. It begins at a red oak and runs east … to a *Limewood.
1832. Tennyson, Miller’s Dau., 211, Poems (1833), 45. When in the breezy limewood-shade, I found the blue forget-me-not.
