An elegant specimen tree, particularly in designed landscapes and avenues, though not always popular as a street tree owing to sticky aphid honeydew. Its epithet combines platys (broad) and phyllon (leaf). Most British and Irish trees are subspecies cordifolia, also native to France, Belgium and Denmark, distinguished by hairier leaves than the nominate subspecies.
Native to most of north-west Europe except Ireland, Portugal and Norway, and east through Turkey to northern Iran. Native to England and Wales, a neophyte in Ireland, and fairly uncommon where not planted, naturally occurring on calcareous rocky outcrops, screes, wooded ravines and cliffs.
Monoecious, with clusters of 3-6 insect-pollinated hermaphrodite flowers. The fruit is a dry, nut-like drupe (1-2 seeds) attached to a persistent papery wing-bract for wind dispersal. Unlike Small-leaved Lime, it readily sets fertile seed even in cool summers. It also spreads by suckering and layering.
Tall (40m), domed, usually clean-stemmed but often coppiced or pollarded, with few basal epicormics. Growth is sympodial, the terminal bud withering each summer and replaced by a lateral bud. Bark grey-brown and smooth with lenticel rows, maturing into long ridges. Twigs grey-brown, reddening in sun, often hairy; buds three-scaled, alternate. Leaves (11x10cm), quite round with drooping sides, dark green and slightly corrugated above, velvety with brown vein-axil tufts below, serrate. Flowers in drooping clusters of 3-7 (12-17mm), yellow-green, sweetly scented, June-July. Fruits in clusters of 3-7, obovoid (10-12mm), densely white-felted, thick and woody with five ribs. It frequently hybridises with Small-leaved Lime to form fertile Common Lime.
A robust, long-lived species that competes well with other large broadleaves thanks to deep roots, often the tallest in mixed woodland. Prefers calcareous, well-drained, stony or rocky sites. Shade-bearing as a seedling but relying on canopy gaps to persist, struggling against competing ground flora. It can be cut and coppiced, regrowing from lateral buds. Cultivars include 'Aurea' (yellow twigs) and 'Tiltstone Filigree' (red twigs).
Flowers are pollinated by bees, hoverflies, butterflies and moths, including the larval food-plant role for Lime Hawk-moth (Mimas tiliae), one of Britain's largest moths. Lime nail galls (red 'nails' through the leaf) are unmissable infections.
Generally healthy, including resistance to honey fungus. Attracts browsers, especially deer and Grey Squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis), being among the most targeted of all tree species for the latter.
Its timber resembles Small-leaved Lime's: pale, soft, easy to work, split-resistant and non-durable. Large-leaved Lime is an important honey-producing species in parts of Europe (such as France), yielding a dark, slightly bitter honey prized in cooking and believed to have anti-inflammatory properties.
