Phil's Tree Pages — Identifying Limes

Identifying Limes

You know it's a lime because: the alternate leaves have a shape characteristic of limes (except for Mongolian Lime), and the flowers and fruit are also characteristic of limes.

Common Lime is the hybrid of the two native limes, Small-leaved and Broad-leaved, and has been planted in huge quantities. Unfortunately it has also become a hit with aphids, which leak honeydew, which makes the pavements sticky and which is popular with sooty moulds, which make the leaves black... A general rule of thumb for identifying limes is to begin with the assumption that large trees are likely to be Common Limes (until proven otherwise) whereas younger trees, particularly in an urban setting, are unlikely to be so.

•	Common Lime, of course, shows the annoying high degree of variation often encountered with hybrids, particularly in leaf size; its most distinctive feature is its shape, which is nearly always significantly narrow, even when planted singly. The leaves are lime-green when young, usually messy when old, and a dirty white underneath with medium-sized buff tufts in the vein joints. The buds, like Small-leaved Lime, have two visible scales; the fruit is a rather less clear-cut version of those of Broad-leaved Lime.
•	Broad-leaved Lime is the hardest lime to differentiate from Common Lime, and is quite widely planted in similar contexts. The shape is noticeably broader; the leaves are furry beneath; the fruit is strongly ribbed; and the buds have three scales visible.
•	Small-leaved Lime is an altogether much smarter tree than Common Lime, with small, crisply flat leaves, buds with two visible scales, and erect flower sprays which yield tiny, unribbed fruit.
•	Crimean Lime is very common in parks and has smooth, glossy darker-green leaves with big brown tufts in the vein joints.
•	Silver Lime is obvious, with silvery leaf undersides and with pumpkin-like fruit, although it can sometimes be hard to distinguish it reliably from its cultivar, Silver Pendent Lime, which has longer leaf-stalks and a somewhat weeping aspect.
•	American Lime looks very like Common Lime, but the leaves have teeth which are a bit too big and the leaf-bases are consistently obliquely-slashed.
•	Mongolian Lime has very distinctive leaves and it is not obvious that it is a lime unless you see the fruit.

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