Appearance, characteristics and properties

What the linden tree offers us

The linden is one of the most popular trees - with its role as a meeting center on village squares, as Edging avenues or as a light source of shade in parks and gardens, it has always been loyal to people Companion. Its lovely, fragrant flowers, which appear from May to July, are a sensual and healing gift of the linden tree - it lets itself in Make tasty, cold-relieving and sleep-promoting tea and beekeepers let their bees use it as one of the most popular types of honey do. These are all the well-known things that we get from the linden tree:

• Classic center for socializing (Dorfbaum)
• friendly shade provider
• Avenue facing
• fragrant flowers for tea and honey

But the fruits can also be useful to humans. Many believe that after flowering, the linden tree that can be used for the season is grazed. But far from it. Although it is less well known, the fruits of the linden tree are edible. So you can definitely get out of the shade of the popular flowers! But first to biology.

Appearance and other characteristics of the fruit

The fruits that form on the linden after blooming are nut fruits that appear in small, round shapes. Depending on the type of linden, the fruits look a little different - and not all of them are really edible. All linden fruits are characterized by a narrow bract - this serves as a kind of flying sail, with the help of which the ripe fruit is to be carried further away. So the distribution radius of the linden tree expands.

Here is an overview of the fruits of the most common species in this country:

Summer linden tree

The fruits of the large-leaved summer linden tree are pentagonal and spherical to oblong and reach a length of about one centimeter. They have a greenish-yellowish, slightly graying color and are covered with felt.

Winter linden

The nuts of the small-leaved ones Winter linden are brown and also covered with felt. Their consistency is much softer than that of summer linden fruits - especially when they are young, they are easy to eat with their oily pulp. Basically, the softness of the fruit is a reliable indicator of its edibility - even with the many cross individuals in the wild.

Silver linden tree

The fruits of the silver linden with their silvery light undersides of leaves are light green and completely spherical.

Crimean linden tree

The color of the Crimean linden fruits is, similar to that of the summer linden fruits, greenish-brownish-greyish. The size is also similar, but the shape is a bit more rounded.

Propagation through the fruits

Of course, the linden also reproduces generatively via the seeds contained in the fruit. However, it also has other methods up its sleeve by which it multiplies, for example vegetatively via stick rash or root spawn. With a lot of patience, a linden tree can also be grown over a seed.