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Tilia henryana
September

This Chinese limetree is the last to flower and perhaps the most striking of all in leaf, the new leaves almost red on emerging and fringed with long bristles. It comes into flower here at the end of August and is still offering its heavenly sharp/sweet scent in early October. The trouble is there are very few specimens in this country, none big and most rather miserable in shape. Hence no photo of a full tree in its glory: the beauty is in the detail.

It was introduced, it seems, from Hupeh in Western China in 1901 by E.H. Wilson, and named after Augustine Henry, the explorer and dendographer who discovered it. Was it modesty that led him to leave it out of his great work, written with Henry Elwes, The Trees of Great Britain and Ireland, published in 1913? More likely that no specimens worth the name were growing here. The biggest now on record was planted at Birr Castle in Ireland in 1946 and is not huge. The 1970 edition of Bean says little about it. It has been unlucky, because it doesn’t qualify as new and is therefore excluded from the splendid New Trees by John Grimshaw and Ross Beyton published this year.

My plant came from Hilliers Nurseries in 1982, and like many in collections was a not totally satisfactory graft, resulting in a lop-sided droopy tree. Happily good upright trees are now available. We have planted one in King’s College Fellows’ Garden in Cambridge. Hopefully in years to come you will see and smell them everywhere.

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