Linden (Tilia)

The sweet smelling linden tree with its heart-shaped leaves is associated with Freya, the Germanic Goddess of truth and love.

It was believed that you could not tell a lie under the linden tree. Large linden trees were places of social gathering and weddings, as well as places to assemble to create laws and render judicial verdicts. In a Greek myth, the gods Zeus and Hermes disguise themselves as peasants and go door-to-door seeking food and shelter, but are turned away by all save an elderly couple, Baucis and Philemon. As a reward for the couple’s hospitality, the gods transformed them upon their deaths into an intertwining oak and linden tree.

The wood of the linden tree has fine acoustic properties and is used in many instruments, from the electric guitar to recorders and percussion instruments. I think of the linden as a musical tree, not only for the uses of its wood, but also because when it blooms in the summer it's abuzz with the music of bees. The linden is an excellent tree for supporting bee populations, and linden honey is considered exceptionally flavorful. As a lover of plants and science, when I see a linden tree, I am reminded of Carl Linnaeus, the famous Swedish botanist and father of modern taxonomy (the standardized method by which we name all living organisms). Carl Linnaeus must have greatly admired the linden tree, because he adopted the Latin derivation of linden as his surname.