Recently I noticed that some of the leaves on a local lime tree had these (see above) peculiar sticky-up-bits on them, growing upwards out of the body of the leaf like emerging serpents. The leaves themselves seem ok, so far.
Although lime (s.p.b.) is a native species of tree it is now rarely found ‘in the wild’, but mostly a result of deliberate planting in parks and streets.
Having grown-up in a rural area I don’t recall mention of lime trees in the way that one learned to identify, for example, horse chestnuts, elms, oaks (if there was one) and the trees/shrubs such as laburnham, lilac, hawthorn, blackthorn, willows etc. In fact I would have assumed that a lime tree was just the sort that produced limes as their fruit, and these not in England. Until the epidemic of Dutch elm disease in the 1960s elms were generally the majestic trees of the hedgerow (often portrayed in Constable paintings) whereas in stature lime trees come a close second.
So then would the early Tudor monarchs and their courtiers (hangers-on) have seen lime trees self-sown in their hunting parks such as those at Cottingham, Beverley, Leconfield and parts of Holderness? The answer must be yes, whereas for horse chestnuts the text books state that it was introduce in the mid 16th century from Europe so the answer would be ‘no’, but for Elizabeth Ist maybe.
Lime trees have a particular characteristic of sprouting lots of shoots at the base of the visible trunk, this more so than most other trees so it can help in identification.