Large-leaved lime

Appalachian-Blue Ridge forests

Arizona Mountains forests

Atlantic coastal pine barrens

Blue Mountains forests

Central Tallgrass prairie

Central-Southern Cascades Forests

Colorado Rockies forests

A medium-to-large native shade tree of central and eastern North America, reaching 50 to 80 feet with an ovate-rounded crown and large, asymmetric heart-shaped leaves. In June it carries pale-yellow, intensely fragrant flowers on pendulous cymes - each cluster hung from a distinctive strap-like leafy bract - that ripen into pea-sized nutlets. The fragrant June bloom is a premier nectar source: Missouri Botanical Garden lists it as attracting bees and butterflies, and the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center flags it as having special value to both native and honey bees.

What it needs

Conditions

Light

Full sun / Part sun

Water

Moderate water

Soil pH

Neutral / Alkaline

Acid is below pH 6.0, neutral 6.0 to 8.0, alkaline above 8.0.

Spacing

30 ft

Habit

Large, long-lived deciduous tree with a single straight trunk and a dense, pyramidal crown when young that becomes broadly columnar to domed with age

Care tips

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Give it room: this is a park-sized tree, 60 to 80 feet tall and 30 to 50 feet wide at maturity, and the RHS recommends it for parks and very large gardens.

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Plant it in moist but well-drained soil; it does best on neutral to alkaline ground, including chalk, and tolerates drought once established.

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Do not plant it over a driveway, patio or parking space: Plants For A Future and the Woodland Trust both say aphids on the leaves drop sticky honeydew on everything below.

Lifecycle

Planting

Plant in full sun or part shade in a moist but well-drained soil. NC State Extension lists clay, loam and sand and gives the soil pH as neutral to alkaline; the RHS lists chalk, clay, loam and sand, neutral or alkaline, and Trees and Shrubs Online says it grows wild mostly on calcareous soils. Plants For A Future accepts mildly acid soil as well. It is a big tree: the RHS calls it suitable for parks and very large gardens, so allow at least 30 feet of clear space around the trunk, and keep it away from parking and paving because of the honeydew.

Transplanting

Plants For A Future says limes transplant easily, and trees up to 60 years old have been moved successfully. Suckers, where they form, can be lifted with as much root as possible while dormant and replanted at once.

Early growth

Water a newly planted tree through its first summers; the Missouri Botanical Garden calls for average, medium-moisture, well-drained soil, though both it and NC State Extension say the tree tolerates drought once established. The RHS suggests some shelter from cold winds. Plants For A Future says limes coppice and pollard well, and the RHS lists it as suitable for coppicing, pleaching and pollarding, so it can be trained into a hedge or a pleached screen from an early age.

Maturity

NC State Extension and the Missouri Botanical Garden give 60 to 80 feet tall and 30 to 50 feet wide, the Missouri Botanical Garden adding that it less often reaches 120 feet. The RHS and Trees and Shrubs Online record trees to about 131 feet, Plants For A Future gives 98 feet by 66 feet, and Wikipedia says open-grown trees are typically 66 to 82 feet. Plants For A Future calls limes very long-lived. NC State Extension and the Missouri Botanical Garden list aphids, borers, scale, leafminers, lace bugs, caterpillars and Japanese beetles, with spider mites in hot dry spells; their disease list is powdery mildew, leaf spots, sooty mould and canker, and NC State adds that verticillium wilt is infrequent but can be fatal. The RHS lists aphids, horse chestnut scale, caterpillars, sawflies and gall mites, and sooty mould, Phytophthora root rot and honey fungus.

Propagation

The RHS gives seed stratified in containers outdoors in spring, chip budding, and suckers lifted in winter. Plants For A Future says this is the only lime that reliably sets viable seed where summers are cool, which Trees and Shrubs Online confirms, but advises cutting a few fruits open first to check for a seed. Fresh seed sown at once in a cold frame may come up the next spring or take 18 months; stored seed has a hard coat and a dormant embryo and can take up to eight years, which five months of warm and then five months of cold stratification shortens. NC State Extension says propagation by seed is challenging and that young shoots may be transplanted. Plants For A Future says the species hybridises freely with other limes, so seed from a garden tree may not come true.

Native range

Worldwide native range.

Climate notes

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NC State Extension and the Missouri Botanical Garden both list it for USDA hardiness zones 3 to 7. Plants For A Future gives 4 to 6 and Trees and Shrubs Online zone 4, which are not used here; the RHS rates it H6, hardy in all of the UK and northern Europe.

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The native range here is taken from Kew's World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP), the dataset POWO publishes: Europe from Spain, Corsica, France and Great Britain east through Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark and southern Sweden, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Poland, Czechia and Slovakia, Hungary, Italy and Sicily, the Balkans, Greece, Bulgaria, Romania and Ukraine, to the North Caucasus and Transcaucasus, Türkiye and Iran. Trees and Shrubs Online describes woodland, mostly on calcareous soils, to about 4,921 feet, and calls it a more upland tree than small-leaved lime.

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Sources differ on its status in the British Isles. WCVP, the RHS, the Woodland Trust and Trees and Shrubs Online all treat it as native in England and Wales, where the Woodland Trust calls it the rarest native lime, found locally in southwest England on lime-rich soils; NC State Extension lists it as introduced in Great Britain, which this record does not follow. WCVP and Trees and Shrubs Online agree that it is not native in Ireland.

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WCVP records it as introduced in Ireland, the Baltic States and Uzbekistan. None of the sources here calls it invasive, and Plants For A Future rates its weed potential as no. Trees and Shrubs Online says it has long been grown in North America, though usually sold as the hybrid common lime, and that Michael Dirr could not find it in recent American nursery catalogues.

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Sources agree on summer bloom but differ on the detail: the Missouri Botanical Garden and NC State Extension give June, Plants For A Future June to July, the RHS midsummer, and Trees and Shrubs Online says it opens quite early in the season for a lime. They also differ on how many flowers make a cluster: three to five per the RHS, three to seven per Trees and Shrubs Online, and four to ten per the Woodland Trust.

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